Charles Darwin Conversation One

Syamasundara: Darwin is the originator of the doctrine of natural selection, or survival of the fittest. That means that in the course of adapting to the environment one type of animal will develop in a particular way which is best suited for that environment, and he will pass on his superior qualities to his offspring so that that particular species will survive, whereas another, which is not so suitable to that environment, will die out. This is called natural selection. Nature selects different species that can best survive.
Prabhupada: So what is the explanation of the nature?
Syamasundara: Nature is a combination of physical forces in the universe.
Prabhupada: What does he say about nature?
Syamasundara: All phenomenon can be explained by means of physical laws.
Prabhupada: Who made these physical laws?
Syamasundara: He is not so much concerned with...
Prabhupada: Why is he not concerned? If he is putting some theory for understanding, why he is not concerned with some primary principles?
Syamasundara: He says that we cannot be certain how everything began.
Prabhupada: Then how he is certain that this natural circumstance is favorable? How he is making certain?
Syamasundara: He made many, many tests; he has much evidence.
Prabhupada: What is that evidence?
Syamasundara: Animals adapt to their environments, just like if you...
Prabhupada: Why he takes animals first? Why not others?
Syamasundara: Animals, trees, plants, insects, men, he examines all the different varieties. For instance if you put a certain animal in a cold climate, he will develop hair to protect his body against the cold, and he will pass on this characteristic to his sons.
Prabhupada: The people in Greenland, do they develop hair?
Syamasundara: They don't have so much hair, but they develop very fatty tissues. Their eyes are slitted so there is not so much snow and bright light...
Prabhupada: Then development of hair is not only the existent; there are other many conditions. You cannot say that development of hair is due to the condition as he says, natural condition. That is not a fixed-up...
Syamasundara: I was just using that as an example of how a species can adapt to its environment.
Prabhupada: The question is that this development of body, is there any plan that this body should exist in certain conditions of nature, and therefore he must have these equipments, either you say, tissues or veins or hair? Who has made these arrangements? That is the question.
Syamasundara: His answer to that is chance variation.
Prabhupada: That is nonsense. There is no such chance. If he says chance, that means he is a nonsense.
Syamasundara: He examines that...
Prabhupada: He examines what is already existing. But our question is, who has made these different circumstances for the existence of different animals? That is our question.

Syamasundara: Just like the frog may lay millions of eggs. Out of all those millions of eggs, a few--three, four--may survive. That means those who were the fittest, by chance they happened to be best, fittest to survive. Otherwise too many frogs...
Prabhupada: If I say that frogs or many others animals lay eggs, millions... Just like the snake gives birth to so many hundreds and thousands of snakes at a time. So, if so many snakes are allowed to exist, then there will be disturbance. Therefore the nature's law is that the big snake eats up the small, small snakes. That is nature's law. But behind this nature's law there is brain. That is our proposition: that nature's law is not blind. There is brain, and that brain is God. We get it from Bhagavad-gita: mayadhyaksena prakrtih suyate sa-caracaram. So whatever things are happening in the material nature, it is being done by indication of the Supreme Lord in order to maintain everything in order. Just like the snake is laying eggs, thousands. If they are not killed, then the whole world will be full of snakes only. So there is a plan that the snakes will eat. Just like tiger, tiger. They also have their cubs, but the male tiger kills them and the female tiger hides them. So many tigers are coming out. So that is another economic (indistinct) theory that whenever there is large number of population there must be some war, epidemic, some earthquake, like that. They should die. So these natural activities are planned; they are not chance. As he is saying, "chance," that means he has no sufficient knowledge.
Syamasundara: On the other hand, he has a huge amount of evidence which is gathered...
Prabhupada: Evidence, that is all right. Evidence, we have also got evidence. Evidence must be there. As soon as there is evidence, he should not speak anything of chance.
Syamasundara: Just like out of millions of frogs, one frog will be better adapted to living in the water.
Prabhupada: That is not chance; that is plan. That is plan. That is not chance. He does not know that. As soon as he says chance, that means his knowledge is not perfect. Chance... If a man says chance when he cannot explain, that is evasive. Therefore he is not in perfect knowledge; therefore he is not fit for giving any knowledge. He is cheating, that's all, because he has no perfect knowledge.
Syamasundara: He sees a plan or a design also, but he sees it in...
Prabhupada: Therefore if he sees a plan and design, then whose design? As soon as you call it design, there must be designer. If you call it a plan, there must be a planner. That he does not know.
Syamasundara: He would say that the plan is only the workings of a mechanical nature.
Prabhupada: No. That is nonsense. Nature is not working mechanically. There is a plan. The sun is rising exactly according to calculation. Calculation not first; first the sun rises. But we get experience than in such-and-such season the sun rises at such-and-such time, so in that season, exactly to the minute, to the second, the sun rises. So it is neither chance nor whimsical. There is a p]an. There is a plan.
Syamasundara: Could it not be said that that is mechanical...
Prabhupada: Who made this mechanical? As soon as you bring the question of mechanical, there must be a brain who set up the machine. Mechanical means, just like these, your all Telex is working. That is mechanical. That is all right. But behind that machine... (break)
Syamasundara: Isn't it possible that some day we may be able to discover the source of all these chemicals?
Prabhupada: There is no question of discovering; there is already, it is known. It is not known to you. We know. It is not known to you, but it is known to us. The Vedanta says, janmady asya yatah. The original source of everything: Brahman. We know it. Krsna says, aham sarvasya prabhavo mattah sarvam pravartate: "I am the origin of everything." So we know that there is big brain who is doing everything, mayadhyaksena prakrtih. So we know. Darwin may not know. That is his foolishness.
Syamasundara: He might say the same thing about us.
Prabhupada: No. He cannot say the same thing about us. We accept Krsna, not blindly. Our predecessors, our acaryas, our learned scholars, they have accepted. So we are not blind. Rather, he cannot say anything. As soon as he says chance, that means he has no knowledge. We don't say chance. We have got an original cause. But he says chance; therefore he has got no knowledge.
Syamasundara: The scientists have found that we grow up out of a set of genes in the sperm of the male. They are called genes, tiny cells.
Prabhupada: That's all right. Wherefrom the genes came?
Syamasundara: These can be altered by cosmic radiation. Supposing a cosmic ray hits the gene, it may change it slightly so that maybe it comes out with...
Prabhupada: That is not the question. Suppose if you have got life, I can kill you with a knife. But the question is, "Wherefrom this life came?" I can change, merely with a knife, your life. That is not a very important thing, changing. The thing is to find out the origin, wherefrom the genes came.
Syamasundara: He has a book called The Origin of Species, and so...
Prabhupada: First of all, you are testing his knowledge.
Syamasundara: I'm trying to explain. You want to know what he thinks is the origin; so he traces back through geological excavations to the most simple forms of life, and they see that in the...
Prabhupada: What is the simplest form of life?
Syamasundara: They find at the lowest level of the soil layers which have built up through the years, they find small one-celled animal forms, sea shells, like that.
Prabhupada: How is it forming?
Syamasundara: Gradually, through the ages, they have become more and more complex to this age when...
Prabhupada: What is the beginning?
Syamasundara: In the beginning they have found only a one-celled animals.
Prabhupada: They found, but beyond that they do not know. They found it. It was already there. So wherefrom it came?
Svarupa Damodara: Another definition that is raised by most so-called modern scientists, they try to find out the meaning of what is (indistinct) and what is invention. So many scientists have posed also the concept that invention, strictly speaking, is a paradox. When we say invention, "I invented something," somebody invented radio, and somebody invented such-and-such thing, it is not really an invention.
Prabhupada: Yes.
Svarupa Damodara: They say it cannot come out of nothing. It is already there.
Prabhupada: Yes.
Svarupa Damodara: We did not know it, that it was already there. Foolishly we say that we invent these things.
Prabhupada: You see the action is already going on. You see all of a sudden something comes. But that is not perfect knowledge.
Syamasundara: Then how do you explain that...
Prabhupada: We explain that everything, the source, the original source of everything is Brahman, Absolute Truth, Krsna.
Syamasundara: What we are discussing is this doctrine of natural selection, or survival of the fittest.
Prabhupada: Yes. That natural selection, that law is made by Krsna.
Syamasundara: So there is a law of...
Prabhupada: Yes. Certainly. The scientists say that we do not know wherefrom it is coming. All of a sudden I see something and he says I invented it. It is not invention. It is already there. He could not see before, and now he can see. That's all.
Syamasundara: Just like a dinosaur, these huge animals once existing in...
Prabhupada: That is his imagination.
Syamasundara: They found bones...
Prabhupada: Bones, that's all right. There are many... We also say from Vedic sastras there is fish, timingila, which can swallow up big, big whales, you see. That is also very big. There is the Varaha incarnation who picked up the whole earth on the tusk. How much big the Varaha animal was so that it can pick up the whole earth, earthly planet just like a ball. He cannot imagine such big animals.
Syamasundara: But my point is that they excavated down into the ground and they found that gradually, through the years, that animals are evolving towards more and more complex forms, from very simple forms in the water to land animals, plants, these big dinosaurs, then they died out.
Prabhupada: If they died out, that means there is no more existence of that animal. But how can you say that the animal is existing somewhere else? Now, according to his statement that from a certain basic principle, by gradual evolution, the human body is coming, now his theory is that the human body is coming from the monkeys.
Syamasundara: They are related; they come from the same...
Prabhupada: Related? Everything is related. That is another thing. But if the monkey's body is developing into a human body...
Syamasundara: Yes. Apelike man.
Prabhupada: Then after development of human body, why is the monkey species does not cease? Why not it does not cease?
Syamasundara: They are like branches of the same tree, he calls them.
Prabhupada: Branches of the tree, just like we see now the monkey is existing and human being is also existing. Similarly, we say what he sees the beginning of life, at that time also there was human beings.
Syamasundara: They find no evidence of them.
Prabhupada: Why no evidence?
Syamasundara: In the ground. There's no evidence in the ground.
Prabhupada: In the ground? That means that in the ground there is the only evidence? There is no other evidence?
Bali-mardana: Scientists think that the only way to maintain integrity is not to accept anything until they can see it or understand it with their own senses and mind, by material evidence. That is their whole platform of empiric research, that nothing can be accepted until it is proven by their own sensuous experience.
Prabhupada: But they cannot prove that there was no human being wherefrom they are starting their study. They cannot prove.
Syamasundara: It appears from the evidence that there are apelike men in certain layers of soil...
Prabhupada: The apelike man or manlike ape is already existing. If you say development just like from this, it has developed this, there should be no existence of this. Karya-karanam. That's all. Now when I see still both are existing...
Syamasundara: The former doesn't exist any more.
Prabhupada: No, no, no. If from monkey, man is coming, so then when monkey develops into man, the monkey should not exist. Karya-karanam, cause and effect. When the effect is there, the cause is finished now.
Syamasundara: The monkey didn't cause the man; they came from the same common ancestor. That is their explanation. They...
Prabhupada: That is, we say that all we come from God, the same ancestors, the same father. What is the difference?
Bali-mardana: Everyone has the same ancestor.
Prabhupada: The same ancestor. What is the new thing?
Syamasundara: But if I am a Darwinist, your explanations are still not satisfactory to me. I'm not convinced because I see...
Prabhupada: My explanation is that the original father is Krsna. As Krsna says in the Bhagavad-gita, sarva-yonisu kaunteya: "As many forms are there, I am the bija pradah pita, I am the seed-giving father." So what is your objection to this?
Syamasundara: Well, if I examine the layers of earth, I find no evidence in any of the layers below of any...
Prabhupada: You are packed up with the layers of the earth, that is all. That is your boundary of knowledge. That is not knowledge. There are many other evidences.
Syamasundara: But certainly, if there were men living millions of years ago, they would have...
Prabhupada: But man is still living. Man is still living.
Syamasundara: ...they would have left evidence behind them, tangible evidence, that I could see the remains of their civilization.
Prabhupada: So if I say that the human society, man after death is burned into ashes, so where does he get the bones?
Syamasundara: Well, that's possible, but...
Prabhupada: According to our Vedic system, when a man is dead, he is burned into ashes. Where..., why the rascal would get the bones?
Syamasundara: But there are not other... There are no cities...
Prabhupada: The animals, they are not burned. They remain. But human beings they burn into ashes. So he cannot find the human bones.
Bali-mardana: Another thing is that after a certain number of years, bones cease to be bones. They turn back into chemicals and merge into the earth.
Prabhupada: Yes.
Syamasundara: But what about cities and tools, these things? There must be some evidence. In the lowest layer there are clam shells that have become fossilized. In the lower levels millions of years back they find clam shells.
Bali-mardana: They say it's been millions of years, but how do they prove it has been millions of years?
Syamasundara: Through radioactivity.
Bali-mardana: But that is an imperfect method, devised by imperfect senses.

Svarupa Damodara: It is limited. It is limited. It is very hard to find five thousand or six thousand years back.
Bali-mardana: They don't even agree amongst each other about what the age of things are.
Syamasundara: Just like if you go down a hundred feet below the soil, that soil has been down there for a long time. But there is no evidences of men, actually civilized creatures.
Prabhupada: Why he is trying to find out men's bones there? What is the...
Syamasundara: I'm just saying that it appears, because layer after layer is deposited in the earth's crust, that the animal forms are evolving toward more complex forms, from simple animals to bigger animals, and then more complex, then to the civilized man.
Prabhupada: From where it began?
Syamasundara: It began with the simplest form.
Prabhupada: What is that simplest form?
Syamasundara: Small one-celled animals, then bivalves, then mollusks, then simple forms of aquatics.
Bali-mardana: So the one-celled animals must be God.
Syamasundara: That isn't what I'm talking about; I'm just saying that this evolution appears to exist, evolution of species, from simplest forms to more complex forms. That's Darwin's idea.
Prabhupada: But the simplest form is still existing and the complex form is also existing at the present moment. Not that from the simplest form developed, developed, developed. Just like development means, just like I have developed my childhood body. The childhood body is no more there. But it is a fact I have developed from childhood body to this body. There are so many. So similarly, all the species are existing simultaneously, still.
Syamasundara: They find no evidence in the earlier times that these complex forms existed.
Prabhupada: No, no. Earlier times or modern times, when I see all different species, 8,400,000 species of life still existing, so what is the question of development? It existed long ago also. You might not have seen it, you have not source of knowledge to understand, but you have to accept it, because all these species are now existing. Similarly, millions of years ago all these species existed. You might have missed. That is a different thing.
Syamasundara: Then it is simply a matter of one opinion against another, because the scientists say...
Prabhupada: No. It is not opinion, it is a fact. Do you think that this development has ceased all other species, simply human being is there?
Syamasundara: No. But I don't see evidence that all these complex forms...
Prabhupada: I have said that one, this, by evolution, one after another, the human form is there. The Darwin theory is that some forty thousand years ago there was no human beings.
Syamasundara: Several million years.
Prabhupada: But we don't see that. Because at the present moment we see that all the species are there existing, including human beings.
Syamasundara: He says that they evolved. That is...
Prabhupada: They evolved, but they are still existing. Evolved, that is another thing. But all of them are existing still. So how you can say that millions of years they did not exist, all? His theory is that...
Syamasundara: Because there is not evidence that they exist.
Prabhupada: This is the evidence: if now all the species of life are existing, why not millions of years ago? What do you say?
Svarupa Damodara: Yes. It was existing, but simply we did not know.
Prabhupada: Yes. That is one-sided test.
Syamasundara: You can say they existed, but show me. I don't see any proof.
Prabhupada: You do not see the animals, aquatics, birds, bees, trees--everything--is existing?
Syamasundara: Yes. But ten million years ago, according to my excavations, there were no beasts; there were all aquatics.
Prabhupada: That is nonsense. That is nonsense. Ten millions of... Ten million years ago... You cannot give a history of ten millions. It is your imagination. Where is the history of ten millions of years? You are simply imagining, that is your word. But where is historical evidence? You cannot give history more than three thousand years, and you are speaking of ten millions of years. This is all nonsense. How can you go... There is no history in the human civilization for ten millions of years.
Syamasundara: If I dig far into the ground, layer by layer...
Prabhupada: No, no. Dirt... You are calculating ten millions--it may be ten years. Because you cannot give history of the human society more than three thousand years, so how can you speak of ten million, twenty million? Where were you then? It is all imagination. You were existing(?), so existence was not there. How can you say that ten million or twenty million years ago these things happened? This is simply imagination. In that way everyone can imagine and say some nonsense. Everyone can imagine their own way. I can say "No, it is not ten million years. It is fifty millions years."
Syamasundara: They have a scientific way of testing that things disintegrate at a certain rate.
Prabhupada: But here is a scientist, and he does not agree with that.
Syamasundara: What about the half-life of certain elements?
Svarupa Damodara: Yes. The, normally, what they call the age determination, or how old a species is, they normally find out from this so-called (indistinct). They find some bone or something which contains normally carbon(ate). And they get this age of the elements or age of these findings by so-called Carbon 14 method. Carbon 14 is an isotope of normal carbon, it is called Carbon 12. Carbon 14 is radioactive. It's one they put in the radioactive testing, and they find out because it follows the normal chemical laws or physical laws. This is governed by the Lord Himself, by Krsna Himself. They're finding the chemical lowest form, and from that chemical lowest they normally try to reduce the, how old the sample is, and that method is very limited, it is not (indistinct). (break)
Prabhupada: ...fact, because we see all different species of life existing along with human beings. Therefore it should be concluded this is always existing. Human life is always existing. That is our first charge against him. He cannot say there was no human life.
Syamasundara: But we do not see any dinosaurs existing.
Prabhupada: You do not see--your power is very limited--but we have to conclude in this way, when we see at the present moment all the different species of life are existing. Therefore it is existing always.
Syamasundara: But I don't see all the...
Prabhupada: You don't see because you have no power to see. Your senses are very limited. You don't see. And because you don't see, it is not to be accepted. So many people say, "I don't see God." That does not mean we shall accept, "Oh, so many people say--majority of people, will say like that--'We don't see God.' " Then we are merely crazy fellow, we are after God?
Syamasundara: No. But dinosaurs...
Prabhupada: But simply by dinosaurs missing you cannot say that what about other all species of life, other.
Syamasundara: Many, many, many, many are extinct, according to...
Prabhupada: I am accepting many are extinct, but the evolutionary process, it means one extinct, another comes. But we see that the monkey, from monkey, man comes. The monkey is there and man is there. The monkey is not finished.
Syamasundara: I remember last time when we discussed this, you said, "Well, then, why don't we see men coming out of monkeys still?"
Prabhupada: Yes.
Syamasundara: "Why hasn't some man been born out of a monkey?"
Prabhupada: Yes.
Syamasundara: "In our experience..."
Prabhupada: The monkey is existing and man is existing.
Syamasundara: "So if men came from monkeys, why don't we see it still happening?" That's what you said.
Prabhupada: Yes. That is our argument.
Syamasundara: So if you accept that there is an evolution, do you accept that the bodies change because of changing conditions of the natural surroundings?
Prabhupada: Body is not changing. The body is already there. The soul is changing bodies, transmigrating from one body to another.
Bali-mardana: Darwin doesn't accept that there is a fixed number of species. Rather, the number of species may vary at any time according to the natural selection. But he doesn't give any axiom that there are certain numbers of species from which all other variations come. We are saying that there are 8,400,000 species to begin with.
Prabhupada: But if first of all you give account for eight million species--you have no account. We say these are the fixed-up species. But your calculation of species, first of all give us account for eight millions, then you say, "The list is not complete."
Syamasundara: Their idea is that there's constant...
Prabhupada: Whatever it may be, within that eight millions, but you cannot give us list.
Syamasundara: They say that there is new species always evolving.
Prabhupada: That is not new. That is within the eight millions. You could not find the same thing, you could not find, before that; now we are finding your species. You could (not) give us a complete list. What is the evolutionary process wherefrom it began and how it's coming? You cannot give any fixed-up list. That is your imperfect knowledge. You are simply imagining. "It may be changed," "It may be chance," or this or that. That's all.
Syamasundara: Just like, let's say some condition changes suddenly in an environment...
Prabhupada: Yes. Any condition changes, but within the eight millions. Because you cannot give us any list, so then you have to accept whatever species of life may take by changes or circumstance with this or that. That will be within the eight millions.
Syamasundara: Just like if you open(?) a marketplace, at any given point you can go through the marketplace and see that there's this kind of person, this kind of person and...
Prabhupada: Yes.
Syamasundara: And he may go away from the marketplace. So if because he goes away, you can't say that that person doesn't exist any more because he's not observable there.
Prabhupada: Yes. Yes.
Svarupa Damodara: Actually, in Darwin's concept he used the natural selection, but he doesn't go far enough what that nature is. He used the term "natural," but he does not know how to...
Prabhupada: Yes. Explain what is nature. That means insufficient knowledge.
Syamasundara: He simply observed there are mutations in nature. For instance, he thinks that perhaps at one time...
Prabhupada: That means nature is working.
Syamasundara: Yes.
Prabhupada: Nature is working, but he cannot explain how nature is working.
Syamasundara: At one time he says that one ape developed an opposing thumb so he was able to use tools, grasp things, so he became superior and passed that quality on to his offspring and that developed into man. Simply by...
Prabhupada: Then when there is offspring, then the same question comes: "Why the monkey does not produce offspring--a man?" What is this nonsense?
Bali-mardana: Scientists often take the shelter of this premise, that it's not..., we don't..., we're not trying to find out. Whenever they're asked what is the original source, they say, "We're not concerned with that. We're concerned with just examining the phenomenon of that source."
Prabhupada: Yes. That is childish. That is childish. Just like I have seen the phenomena, without man there cannot be singing. In the box there must be one man there. This is childish calculation, that's all. Phenomenal study means childish. A fan, in our childhood we will think that a fan is running, there must be some ghost who is running it. So this sort of phenomenal study is not scientific study. It is not scientific. If we don't find the original cause, that is not scientific.
Bali-mardana: That's what they're looking for. But because they can't produce a satisfactory answer, they have to say, "Well, we're not looking for that." They can't come forward with an answer.
Prabhupada: Yes. That is, what it is called? (Sanskrit), principle logic, or something like that, it is called.
Syamasundara: (indistinct) in question.
Prabhupada: That is not perfect knowledge.
Syamasundara: You must admit, though, being a scientist, that supposing you go down to the bottom of the Grand Canyon, you see so many layers of earth going up thousands of feet, that the layers at the bottom are very, very old. You must admit, because the earth takes so many years to deposit soil. Even if it's only one million years, it's still very old. And in that lowest layer we find only evidences of simple...

Prabhupada: Where is the lowest layer, he has gone? Where is it? Wherefrom it begins?
Syamasundara: The Grand Canyon is an example. That's a very deep canyon in the ground in Arizona.
Svarupa Damodara: What happens if there was no human beings in that area?
Prabhupada: Yes.
Syamasundara: Human beings aside, we still find...
Prabhupada: Just like desert. Desert there is no human beings. If you dig the desert, what you will find?
Syamasundara: That's all right. It doesn't matter if it was ocean; still we find gradually the forms become more and more complex toward the...
Prabhupada: But we cannot say where is the beginning and where is the end.
Syamasundara: No. That we can't say.
Prabhupada: Therefore his knowledge is imperfect.
Syamasundara: He said that if we say the origin of species is the simplest form, one-celled...
Prabhupada: How the species living force came in? What is the cause? How it is coming? Wherefrom the life begins?
Bali-mardana: It still evades the principal question of who is the creator. I can build a big house or I can build a small box. The point is, who is the builder? So it's evading the question of who... Even if everything started with a one-celled animal, what started the one-celled animal?
Prabhupada: Yes. Wherefrom the one cell came?
Syamasundara: That they say. He says (it) comes from four different chemicals: oxygen, hydrogen...
Prabhupada: Well, wherefrom the chemical came? They're not questioning. Who supplied the chemical?
Syamasundara: We still may be able to discover some day...
Prabhupada: That means you are fool, that you are granted. As soon as you say "still," that means you are fool number one. That is our (indistinct).
Svarupa Damodara: That's what the modern scientists are doing. They're trying to make life in a test tube. What they are trying to do, these so-called biochemists, at the present time the goal is to make life in a test tube. So what they do is they are going to put so-called big molecules--they say DNA, dioxynucleic acid. This molecule is a necessary molecule for..., it's life maintaining. So they're going to make certain combinations of these molecules and put in the test tube and find out whether there is life coming out from the test tube, and then trying to prove how life was formed. But it's such a foolish idea that they will never be able to make the...
Prabhupada: They are a set of fools. And going on under the name of scientists. Set of fools.
Svarupa Damodara: On the other hand, the so-called physicist... His name was Heisenberg. He produced the concept of the theory of uncertainty, and he found out that certain physical rules that govern certain parts of the so-called universal system of rules--why the planets are moving around the sun, and why they repeated course and so on. But he did not know what was the answer. So he named the title of the theory, the Theory of Uncertainty. Based on that, there are so many groups coming up, but they found that uncertainty itself, that implies that there is some...
Prabhupada: Basic principle is uncertainty, and they're building on big, big buildings.
Syamasundara: Darwin calls it the missing link.
Prabhupada: That missing link, let them learn from us. We can give him the missing link.
Bali-mardana: But ultimately they'll say it'll come down to if we propose that Krsna is the creator or that God is the creator, then they'll say "That must be proved to me." In other words, they want to fit God within their own empiric gaze. That will be their only satisfaction when they actually become able to circumvent God's existence and create a power by their own intelligence.
Prabhupada: He has to admit that the theory of uncertainty is bogus, but everything is there, and that behind all these things there must be big brain. That one has to accept. Simply uncertainty, that is not a science. The certainty is that behind all these things there is a big brain. I do not know Him--that is a different thing--but there is a big brain.
Syamasundara: Darwin, he was not so much interested in those questions of origin and those things, but he was a botanist and a biologist, and he simply wanted to investigate how things evolved from one simple form to a more complex form...
Prabhupada: That he cannot say, how the... He captured something out of his imagination, but he cannot explain scientifically.
Syamasundara: From simple forms to more complex forms.
Prabhupada: Yes.
Syamasundara: Well, he says that this happens through mutation.
Prabhupada: But then do it in the laboratory by mutation, by combination.
Syamasundara: They can do that.
Prabhupada: No. But he just said that is not possible.
Svarupa Damodara: Srila Prabhupada, they find that just like I said already, the basic elements of life--carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen...
Syamasundara: You know the theory, not theory but practical proof, that the genes can be mutated by bombarding with cosmic rays.
Svarupa Damodara: Yes. That they prove by so-called... That's why the concern... The example of that mutation is the cancer cell. They try to find out how cancer is caused in the body. They say that somehow the cell has been changed, and they say that it has been done by mutation, and they try to prove it in the laboratory by changing the structure of the cell, and that is called mutation. So they say why the cancer is formed because cancer is an abnormal cell, this is a normal cell. So answering why these elements are formed from these basic four chemicals--carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen and oxygen--they try, they say that somehow this nitrogen and hydrogen, they combine forming ammonia. That is called ammonia, from nitrogen and hydrogen. They say somehow this has formed, and somehow, by combination of hydrogen and oxygen, water is formed. And somehow by combination of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen, these so-called carbohydrates, or these are formed. But they say somehow these are formed, but they do not know how it is formed.
Syamasundara: But all that Darwin is interested in is in the evolution of species: how one type of body evolves to the other type due to the changing conditions, and that because he has evolved a certain body he is best adapted to survive in that condition so that his species survives. So the scientists have shown that by bombarding the cosmic radioactive elements, that a gene or cell can change, mutate, so a different kind of animal comes out. From one kind of mother a different kind of animal comes out.
Prabhupada: But we say that different kind of animal is not beyond these 8,400,000 species.
Svarupa Damodara: Actually this is not completely different animal. Some of these properties...
Syamasundara: A variation.
Svarupa Damodara: Just a little change. But another point in that connection is that nature makes its own (indistinct) balance of all the species, and it could have been all a balance. That is why, when nature is balancing all the species, there is no question of making another species fresh or something. This has been already made. It has already been done by nature. What is that nature, you have to ask by going to the real nature, not this false nature.
Syamasundara: Just like Darwin first investigated some islands off of Peru, Galapagos Islands, and he found different species of life that exist there that don't exist anywhere else, so that they must have evolved...
Prabhupada: That means that he has not seen all the species, because he has not traveled all over the universe. He has seen one island but he has not seen the whole creation, Yes? How he can fix up. There may be many others he has not seen.
Syamasundara: But the only thing that I want to get at is...
Prabhupada: The only thing he has has studied, this earthly planet...
Syamasundara: ...how the bodies change.
Prabhupada: ...but there are many other millions of planets, he has not seen all of them. He has not excavated, dug the depth of all the planets, so how he can conclude that this is all? He has not seen everything, neither it is possible for this.
Syamasundara: But according to the conditions, different conditions on this planet, natural conditions, certain animals...
Prabhupada: Yes. But he has not seen different conditions in different planets. Suppose the sun planet, the condition is fire. So how life can exist in the fire, he has no knowledge.
Bali-mardana: You point out in the introduction to Sri Isopanisad that deductive conclusions are always imperfect because you have to be able to deduce everything in order to come out to the right conclusion. Just like if you live in a village where everyone is only five feet tall, you may deduct that everyone in existence is only five feet tall; but if you go to the next village you may find someone who is six feet tall. So you have to search out every village and see every person before you...
Prabhupada: That is not possible for you. How many millions of villages are there?
Syamasundara: Yes. But see, we're talking about two different things now. He is talking about the doctrine of natural selection or survival of the fittest...
Prabhupada: But natural selection, that means it is not his selection. Natural selection.
Syamasundara: Natural selection.
Prabhupada: So nature is more powerful than him. So he has not studied nature.
Syamasundara: He studies how the bodies change in nature.

Prabhupada: No. He has not studied. He has studied in a particular place only. But nature means, when you speak of nature, suppose you have studied within this planet, but in nature means there is millions of universes, but he has not studied them.
Syamasundara: So you say the doctrine of natural selection is not...
Prabhupada: Natural selection is there, but how the natural selection is working, he does not know that.
Bali-mardana: In a sense we know from Vedic information that the species from one end from the smallest germ up to the highest demigod, they are progressively more advanced. So anyone can come along and take out a small eclipsed portion of that sequence and propose the theory that the species is advancing, but that gamut, that range, perspective of higher and lower is existing, but not that it's evolving...
Prabhupada: It is already there. I am simply changing place, transmigration. That is our theory--transmigration.
Syamasundara: But you still haven't answered satisfactorily...
Prabhupada: Just like you are traveling in a train. There is first class, second class--that is already existing. But if you pay more, you come to the first class. You cannot say, "Now the first class is now created." It was already existing. So their defect is that they have no information of the soul. The soul is transmigrating. The forms are already there. The soul is transmigrating from one apartment to another apartment. That they do not know.
Syamasundara: But still I'm not convinced that if we make geologic investigations all over the world, not just the Grand Canyon or here or there, but in many parts of the world we always find the same thing, that the...
Prabhupada: But if you say that you have studied all over the world, I say you have not studied all over the planet. That is still defective.
Syamasundara: Let's just confine it to this planet.
Prabhupada: No. Why should you confine it? Nature is not only within this planet.
Syamasundara: Because you said that millions of years ago there were many complex forms of life existing on this planet.
Prabhupada: No. Not on this planet; maybe anywhere. It is when you say nature, nature is not confined--what is called--limited within this planet. That you cannot say. When you say nature, this material nature, there are millions of universes and millions of planets in each and every universe. If you have studied... Suppose you have studied this planet; that is not sufficient knowledge.
Syamasundara: So, but you said before that millions of years ago there were complex forms of life on this planet: men, horses, animals, elephants...
Prabhupada: Yes. Yes.
Syamasundara: But from hundreds of different sources of this...
Prabhupada: But I say, I say that it is still existing. The man is existing, the horse is existing, the snake is existing, the insect is existing, the trees are existing; why not millions of years ago?
Syamasundara: Because there's no evidence.
Prabhupada: This is the evidence. This is the evidence. You cannot give the history of this planet. Now suppose the existence of sun, you cannot give history. The sun is existing millions of years ago. It is not that sun is created now. The sun is existing now, the moon is existing now, so why should not they come from millions of years also? The sun existing, and within the sun everything is existing. So if the sun is existing, then other things must be existing. That is my (indistinct).
Syamasundara: They may be existing, but on this planet we have no evidence...
Prabhupada: That doesn't mean... That means you limit your study to one planet. That is not full knowledge.
Syamasundara: I just want to find out for the time being about...
Prabhupada: Why time being? If you are not perfect in your knowledge, then why should I accept your theory? That is my point.
Syamasundara: Well, if you make claims that millions of years ago there were complex forms of life on this planet...
Prabhupada: Why you are... I never said on this planet. By nature's way everything is existing.
Syamasundara: So on this planet there were not complex forms of life millions of years ago...
Prabhupada: So maybe; may not be. That is not of the point. The point is that everything is existing in the nature's way. The species, as we say from Vedic language, 8,400,000, fixed-up. So maybe in your neighborhood, in my neighborhood, it is, they have got..., they are fixed up. But you simply, if you study your neighborhood, that is not perfect knowledge.
Syamasundara: I accept that. But I want to understand that the theory of evolution is that...
Prabhupada: Theory of evolution we accept.
Syamasundara: ...from simple forms of life, more complex forms evolve.
Prabhupada: Yes. That's all right. But they are all existing still. They are not extinct. That is the point.
Syamasundara: All right. But on this planet, now if we could examine this planet...
Prabhupada: Again you come to this planet. Why you are sticking to this planet?
Bali-mardana: Lord Brahma, the most complex... From the Vedic information we find that the most complex living entity was first, and from him, he created all the variations. So from the most complex the most simple was evolved. Then if you have the wrong information, you could look at it and say it was the opposite, that from the most simple the most complex evolved. The sequence is there, and if you observe it in the wrong way, you may conclude it's going in the opposite direction.
Syamasundara: But in the Vedic scriptures...
Prabhupada: The first creature is Brahma, the most intelligent, the most learned.
Syamasundara: ...and he said, and you say that on this planet there were pastimes, for instance, of Lord Ramacandra millions of years ago, with His men, His animals, His horses, deers, so many things. But in all of our evidences we find only at that time the most simple forms of life...
Prabhupada: Your evidence... You will be satisfied with your evidence, but I have got my own evidence. Why shall I accept your evidence? You cannot force your evidence, your so-called evidence upon me. What is evidence? First of all you have to select, what is that evidence.
Syamasundara: Terrestrial, archaeological findings...

Prabhupada: No. No. That is not evidence. That is not evidence.
Bali-mardana: If you find a bone, how do you know it's not...
Prabhupada: That is imperfect. You have studied one portion of the creation. That is not evidence. In other portion of the creation there is different. But that is not evidence. Your study, your limited study is not evidence.
Svarupa Damodara: So the evidence posed by Darwin's theory is not enough to explain...
Prabhupada: Yes.
Syamasundara: Yes. I agree with that. It doesn't explain there is an evolution...
Prabhupada: Evolution we accept. There is no quarrel about that point. But we say there are 8,400,000 species of life, evolution is coming through that. But you cannot give us any list that so many... We give real evolution, that there are 8,400,000 species of life, and the living entity coming through that. (break) ...evolution is taking from here to here, and how many there are? You cannot say. You simply say "missing," "something missing," "something is added," all vague.
Syamasundara: That admitted, but...
Prabhupada: If you admit that you are imperfect in knowledge, then it is no use citing scripture. There will...
Syamasundara: But what I want to know is that...
Prabhupada: ...evolution we admit. But your evolution theory is not perfect. Our evolutionary theory is perfect.
Syamasundara: But it appears that the evolution is from simple to complex.
Prabhupada: That we admit, simple. That we admit. But you cannot say what is the simple and what is the complex one, what are they... You say something missing. That is evasive. Why you should be missing if you are in knowledge? You must say this thing is missing, that you have no knowledge.
Bali-mardana: It's just an axiom, that if any part of the knowledge is perfect, then the whole knowledge is perfect. If you have any part of the truth, you have to have the whole truth in the highest sense. So if their theory is at all correct, and any of the premises are solid, then why it doesn't conclude itself by its own logical deduction? Why it would always have to allude to something missing, some missing factor?
Prabhupada: Jiva jatisu. The Padma Purana says jiva jatisu, so different species of life. And they give: from this, this; from this, this; from this, this. Then, just like it is said that from bird's life the beast's life comes. Now the beasts, this category is of three millions types of beasts.
Syamasundara: Just like they find evidence of large bird, pterodactyl, which has beastlike qualities and has legs also, and they say from that kind of bird evolved a more beastlike As you say, beasts.
Prabhupada: Just like we said that krmayo rudra-sankhyakah paksinam dasa-laksanam. From the insect life the bird's life developed. That we see practically. One has become flying, pterodactyl; in the grass, worm becomes a butterfly. That is, that is evidence.
Syamasundara: But at that time were there only insects existing?
Prabhupada: No. Everything was existing.
Bali-mardana: That's not evolution of the species, it's evolution of the soul through the existing species.
Prabhupada: Transmigration from one body to another. The bodies are already existing.
Syamasundara: For instance, they say that during the Ice Age, when there were..., the earth became very cold, and there were great ice formations in Europe and America, that this animal that they call the mammoth--it's an elephantlike animal but it had long, very long hair for warmth--suddenly this species appears. Does it mean that that body existed always somewhere else, but it just suddenly appeared here...
Prabhupada: Yes, yes.
Syamasundara: ...in order to live here in that environment?
Prabhupada: Yes.
Bali-mardana: What if it is indeed a different species? What do they qualify as the difference in species? I mean, like one man has lots of hair on his body and one man doesn't. That doesn't make him a different species necessarily.
Syamasundara: Yes. But in this case elephants always lived in tropical. They were living in hot climates, and suddenly they had to adapt to the cold.
Prabhupada: Again, that's like we have got experience that the change of season. Different animals are also produced with the change of season. But it is not that they are coming new. They are already existing.
Syamasundara: They're appearing.
Prabhupada: Yes.
Bali-mardana: Appearing and disappearing according to seasons.
Prabhupada: Yes. Just like this Los Angeles City, there is a havoc of flood from the ocean and all men die. That does not mean extinct; the men are there somewhere else. You cannot say that human species are now extinct, because your study is limited.
Syamasundara: Supposing one man in particularly adapted, and he is smart, intelligent, and he survives when everything else is killed...
Prabhupada: That he may survive, that we don't disagree.
Syamasundara: But he would say that that man passes on his superior traits to his children, and it's another species.
Prabhupada: No. He survives, but many other men like him, they are existing somewhere. He may survive of this catastrophe, but that does not mean that other men are all extinct. You cannot say that. In these circumstances this man may survive or may not survive, but man is existing somewhere else.
Syamasundara: And another example, for instance there is a dog called the Pekingese dog. It was made by man, developed by man. They took a certain type of dog and crushed it's jaws in so many instances until eventually that trait was passed on naturally to its children...
Prabhupada: But he is still, it belongs to the dog species. We are speaking of dog species.
Syamasundara: But it is a new type of dog. New type. Never existed before that, here.
Prabhupada: New type, that will not exist also. Because it has been artificially made, it is existing now; now it will not exist again.
Bali-mardana: There's a kind of Indians, when the babies are young they put a board on their head so that (indistinct) like that.
Syamasundara: But now this dog is produced naturally, with its face like that.
Bali-mardana: But it's still a dog.

Prabhupada: The dog species.
Syamasundara: But it's a new species of dog.
Bali-mardana: Well, they call it a new species, but according to Vedic definition it isn't a new species.
Syamasundara: What did you just define by species? You mean different types of men, you say...
Prabhupada: The species, definition of species according to biology is different. We say species means jati, human race.
Syamasundara: So four hundred thousand species of humans.
Bali-mardana: Different levels of consciousness?
Prabhupada: Different levels of consciousness.
Syamasundara: I see.
Bali-mardana: And within any species there can an infinite variety of variations of that one species. Just like...
Prabhupada: Just like the scientists, their species is different. Just like we are making division that 400,000 different types of men. They will say this is one species.
Syamasundara: So would you say, for instance, someone who is less intelligent or more intelligent than I am is in a different species?
Prabhupada: Less intelligent or more intelligent, that does not make any species, because suppose you have got five children, one is less intelligent, more intelligent.
Syamasundara: He was just saying levels of consciousness determine the species.
Prabhupada: Yes. This is levels of consciousness, that just like we divide the human society: some men are brahmana, some men are ksatriya, some men are vaisya, that can be found at any time.
Syamasundara: Those are species?
Prabhupada: They are not species, according to their...
Syamasundara: They are types of men.
Prabhupada: Yes. We said varieties.
Syamasundara: Then what is the different species of man, separate from me; for instance, what is another species that is different than I am?
Prabhupada: I do not know exactly the species, but when we, (break) ...means jati, manusya jati.
Syamasundara: I mean what is an example of different species of man. What are they, for example, several species of men?
Prabhupada: I say that species, this word is not applicable in that sense. In that sense, according to the scientists' species. But when we say species, class you can say. Classes.
Syamasundara: Classes. But what, give me an example.
Prabhupada: Again, just like we are a class--Hare Krsna class. Our mentality is different from others.
Syamasundara: Oh.
Prabhupada: Therefore we are a class.
Syamasundara: So tribes, more like tribal distinctions?
Prabhupada: We are not exactly tribal. Culture, by culture.
Syamasundara: By interest and culture. I see.
Prabhupada: Differentiation of culture.
Syamasundara: Those are species.
Prabhupada: Those who are Aryan, non-Aryan; just like I say, they are all human beings, but why you say one Aryan and another non-Aryan? It is difference of culture, that's all.
Syamasundara: Say, for example, there is Caucasian race, the Negro race, different races like that. If they are all living in the same... Say they all join Krsna consciousness movement, then they are all the same...
Prabhupada: But Krsna consciousness movement is not on the basic principle of this body. It is basically on the soul; therefore you will find everyone same.
Syamasundara: But otherwise it goes...
Prabhupada: Because it is culture. When one comes to the spiritual platform, there is no question. Even animal you can accept. Just like we worship (indistinct), Hanuman. He's animal, but because he's devotee of Lord Ramacandra, we worship. But that doesn't mean we are worshiping animals.
Syamasundara: You mean like Bengalis are a different species than Gujaratis? Something like that?
Prabhupada: Why do you mix what we have already explained? Our jati means of the same culture. He may be Gujarati, he may be Bengali, he may be American.
Syamasundara: So, for instance, carpenters are different than field workers--like that, different interests?
Prabhupada: Why different interest? The interest is to earn money. So you may earn money in some way, I may earn money in some way, he may earn money in some way.
Bali-mardana: So is the primary factor of the variation is how much advanced they are in Krsna consciousness, how least advanced they are in Krsna consciousness?
Prabhupada: Yes. Yes.
Syamasundara: So there are only two species.
Bali-mardana: The demons and the devas.
Prabhupada: This consciousness is coming through so many species, animals, then they're trees, they have no consciousness, but the soul is there.
Syamasundara: I'm still trying to understand what you mean by the species of human life. It's not clear to me. I don't understand what you mean by the different species of human life.
Prabhupada: By culture.
Syamasundara: By culture.
Prabhupada: Yes. One class of human being...
Syamasundara: But everyone is looking for money. You said the field worker is not the same as, or is the same as the carpenter, because they're both looking for money.
Prabhupada: Yes. But one who knows how to earn money very easily, and one may not know. That is culture. That is culture. One man is sitting in one place earning daily one lakhs of rupees.
Syamasundara: So big industrialists and field workers are two different species of men.
Prabhupada: Not species, class. Jati.
Syamasundara: Jati. So when you say 400,000 species of human life...
Prabhupada: Difference of culture.
Syamasundara: It's different from what we think of as species.
Prabhupada: Culture.
Bali-mardana: So the angle of vision is not from the bodily, it's from the closeness of the soul to Krsna consciousness, as far as they're able...
Prabhupada: Unless they accept soul and consciousness, there cannot be question of culture.

Syamasundara: But when the scientists say "species," they mean different types of bodies.
Prabhupada: Yes. We say 400,000 different forms of bodies, so human body, just like Negroes, they are also human beings, and you are also human beings. So this scientists will say they are all one species, human being. But we say that Negro culture and the Aryan culture is different.
Syamasundara: They also say their bodies are different, Negroid bodies or Caucasian bodies, or Oriental bodies...
Prabhupada: Then you can say species. Species and the different bodies.
Syamasundara: Species means different bodies.
Prabhupada: Yes.
Bali-mardana: So the consciousness, the body, or my form, it's pertaining to my consciousness, the developer of my consciousness.
Prabhupada: Yes. You and your brother may be of the same type of body; there may not be a different, same type of consciousness.
Syamasundara: But you just said, for instance, the industrialist and farmers are two different species of men, but there can be a Negro industrialist...
Prabhupada: I already said that. Why don't you listen? Species, definition of the scientists is different from ours. We say class.
Syamasundara: I'm trying to understand, because you said class but then you also said bodies. Negro bodies are different from white Caucasian bodies.
Prabhupada: Many difference of bodies. But that does not...; therefore our classification on the basis of soul. The soul is equal in spite of different types of body. The soul is one. There is no change of the soul. Therefore in the Bhagavad-gita it is said that he does not see the species or the class or definition. He sees one: panditah sama-darsinah. Pandita, one who sees to the (indistinct), the soul, he does not find any difference between these species. This is our point.
Bali-mardana: So Darwin and other similar material scientists, they have no information of the soul, yet they're...
Prabhupada: Again, they're missing the whole point.
Bali-mardana: But they're trying to find out information for themselves, and for others around them, but not knowing who they are, they're drawing on a material platform which is infinite, or at least infinite as far as their capacity to understand. But not only will they never be able to understand the material, the construction of the material arrangement, at ultimate issue it has no pertinence, anyway. It doesn't mean anything.
Syamasundara: No. It does mean something if you accept that forms are evolving from simple to complex. That means that we can expect in the future that mankind will even be of a more superior nature than they are now.
Prabhupada: One form is superior than the other form. Do as you said.
Bali-mardana: That possibility is also there. We know that by performance of certain types of sacrifices you can become (indistinct) and go to the demigod planet...
Prabhupada: That difference is that one apartment is better than the other apartment. Material.
Syamasundara: They would say that from the lowest apartments we are evolving to the better apartments.

Prabhupada: Yes. So according to your position, if you... There are different apartments: first-class apartments, second-class apartments, third-class apartment. But as you are fit to pay the rent or price, then you are allowed to enter in the apartment. The apartments are already there--first-class, second-class, third-class. They are not evolving.
Syamasundara: They say all living things on this earth are evolving in that way, from lower to higher. In the history of the earth...
Prabhupada: That also may be accepted, because just like after certain period, people are constructing a certain type of apartment, next day they construct a different type of apartment. That can be accepted. But the apartment is not evolving; the evolution is taking, on the apartment, on the desire of something else.
Syamasundara: On the desire of something else. So just like...
Prabhupada: That they do not know.
Syamasundara: Oh, I see. Just like...
Prabhupada: They say simply the apartment is changing.
Syamasundara: Just like if it suddenly got cold, the spirit soul would desire to be warm so he would evolve a body with hair.
Prabhupada: Yes. Right. That we say. That is our..., according to the mentality at the time of death you get another apartment. But the apartment is already there.
Syamasundara: I see. So if conditions suddenly change...
Prabhupada: Change of mind.
Syamasundara: ...a new apartment would arrive on the scene. It would appear.
Prabhupada: Not will arrive; it is already there. It is already there.
Bali-mardana: The material nature has it in its closet...
Prabhupada: Yes. "If you want this, yes, come on..."
Bali-mardana: ...that, that dress...
Prabhupada: "If you want this, come on here." It is already there.
Syamasundara: And then all the others will die out and that new one will begin, because the...
Prabhupada: Everyone will die. Everyone will die means change his apartment. Now at the time of changing apartments, suppose I am here, I have to change another; so I can select my apartment, what kind of apartment I should have. But that apartment is already there. I'll have to simply make arrangements, that's all. It is not that I'm creating that apartment.
Syamasundara: The elements, material elements, ingredients are already there.
Prabhupada: Already there.
Bali-mardana: Possibilities are unlimited as far as... It's not possible to make such a close...
Prabhupada: And that apartment is fixed up 8,400,000. Now you can enter into any apartment. Or it is to be ascertained that you cannot think beyond this. Just like a hotel owner, he has got different types of apartments, and he knows the customer cannot think beyond it. So any customer wants, "I'll give this apartment." So by nature's way there is 8,400,000's of apartments. You should be changed according to your mentality: "I want this," "All right. Come on." It is, apartment is not evolving. I am evolving in this sense, but I am changing one apartment to a better apartment. Better apartment is already there.
Syamasundara: To go back to this survival of the fittest theory, supposing we are all here and the water comes, like you said. Supposing one of these persons in Los Angeles has the ability to breathe in water, somehow or other he can breathe under water...
Prabhupada: So we have no objection.
Syamasundara: So he survives; everyone else...
Prabhupada: He survives means... He survives means that even if he's dead, that does not mean that the species is dead. There is another human being in another part of the world.
Syamasundara: I accept that, but I mean I want to...
Prabhupada: So you say that because he does not survive, the whole species is extinct.
Syamasundara: No. But he survives..., one man survives because he is able to breathe in the water.
Bali-mardana: But how is he able to breathe in the water?
Syamasundara: Because he's adapted, he's mutated somehow.
Bali-mardana: But what has been that selective principle that he's adapted?
Syamasundara: According to you, you say it's his desire.
Bali-mardana: But the selective, active principle...
Prabhupada: But the fact is that you do not find anyone that one can breathe within the water.
Syamasundara: No. That's only an example.
Prabhupada: But you should give example which is proper.
Syamasundara: All right. There is a fish which is called lungfish, which... Most fish have gills, they breathe underwater with their gills, they extract oxygen from the water. But there's one fish in Africa that has developed lungs, so that, because it lives in an area where the water sometimes goes away, so it must be able to breathe oxygen from the air. So they say out of millions of fish in the water, one happened to have a pair of lungs, so he survived.
Prabhupada: So we say that means he was already existing. We say there are 900,000 species of fishes. He may be one of them, that's all.
Syamasundara: So the selective principle is there, but all species are already there.
Prabhupada: Already there, existing.
Bali-mardana: The selection will simply be dictated by... The so-called observance of selection is just the circumstance. The water's gone away, so...
Prabhupada: The selection of the species of life. I can select from fish, I can become man; from man I can become fish.
Syamasundara: So that fish desired to survive in that condition. I see.
Prabhupada: Therefore there's a greater law. Just like the hotel people: he has got experience, the customers come and they want this sort of facilities. So he has made all the facilities here to receive all kinds of customers. Similarly, this is God's creation. He knows how much a living entity can think of, so He has made all these species. If he thinks like this, "Come on, here," nature will, "Yes." Prakrteh kriyamanani gunaih karmani. Nature is offering facility, "Yes." God, Krsna as Paramatma within the heart, He knows, He wants this. He wants us, immediately nature, "Give him this apartment," and nature offers, "Yes. Come on. Here is apartment." This is real explanation.
Syamasundara: So I understand that, and I'll accept that, but the one thing I'm still puzzled on is that there's no geological evidence that in former times on this planet there were more complex forms...
Prabhupada: Why you are taking geological evidence as final? Why you are taking that? That is final?
Syamasundara: But it's logical...
Prabhupada: What logic? Science is progressing. You cannot say that this is final.
Bali-mardana: Scientists couldn't deny; they could just say that we haven't found any evidence.
Prabhupada: Yes.
Syamasundara: But until there's something that disproves it to me, then I must accept it, because it..., because it's logical.
Bali-mardana: But that's a false platform. I'll conclude on the basis of my limited knowledge because I don't have the perfect knowledge. That's an abortion.
Prabhupada: Yes.
Syamasundara: Yes. All right. You can say that I've never seen a purple man, so there must be no such thing as a purple man. You can say that, but as far as I can operate within my practicality, there are no purple men. I've never seen one; no one has ever seen purple men. So isn't this logical?
Prabhupada: Purple men?
Syamasundara: I'm just using it as an example.
Prabhupada: What is that purple men? But you have not also seen, why you are, why is that...
Syamasundara: I'm using it as an example of an exception.
Prabhupada: No, no. What, you are scientist, what you have never seen, why you are thinking like that?
Syamasundara: I'm using it as an example of an exception...
Prabhupada: Why example? Why you give a fictitious example which you have no experience?
Syamasundara: All right. So let's say no one has ever seen a...
Prabhupada: No, no. That is another... You cannot say which you have never seen. At least, because yours is experimental, I may say, but you cannot say like that.
Syamasundara: I have excavated in all parts of the world, and every time I go to the...
Prabhupada: No. You have not excavated all parts of the world. That is another nonsense. You have not done this.
Syamasundara: Well, on seven continents I have excavated...
Prabhupada: But that seven continents is not the whole world. That is our charge. That you are claiming that you have excavated all, and we say no, not even an insignificant portion. So your knowledge is limited. (indistinct) this is same thing, Dr. Frog. Dr. Frog is limited within the three-feet well. If he says "I have seen everything," that is not (indistinct).
Syamasundara: But at least in thousands of places they have bored into the earth and dug into the earth, and they've found...
Prabhupada: Thousands of places is not anything, the whole planet.
Bali-mardana: They're always coming up with something new to revise their theory. Just like that pamphlet. They had to revise the whole theory about Carbon 14 because they found a new factor in the deterioration in the element which they never before considered...
Prabhupada: This experimental knowledge is always imperfect. Because they are experimenting with imperfect senses, therefore they must be imperfect. Our source of knowledge is different. We do not depend on experimental knowledge.
Syamasundara: Let us say that the remains of every animal, every living entity that has ever been found in the ground...
Prabhupada: That is also a limited space. You cannot say you have excavated a portion of the earth and that is all. You cannot say.
Syamasundara: So far, anyway.
Prabhupada: So far means that is not all. That is, so far, as soon as it is so far, that is not all.
Syamasundara: But, so surely we must be practical and say that every...
Prabhupada: Practical means...
Syamasundara: We don't operate on things that we have...
Prabhupada: Practical means which is beyond your knowledge, beyond your capacity, that is impractical. So nothing is practical.
Syamasundara: How can I theorize there were other or higher forms...
Prabhupada: You theorize partially, as far as. That is not point, then.
Syamasundara: If I accept your knowledge, how can I theorize that there were higher forms of life millions of years ago if I have never found any evidence and I have searched...
Prabhupada: This is the evidence. This is the evidence. You have to see through the evidence, because in the (indistinct) there are so many species of life, say 8,400,000, they are all existing now. They are all existing now. Therefore why should I conclude that millions of years they did not exist?
Syamasundara: You say they are all existing now, but I don't see the dinosaur. There are no dinosaurs on this planet.
Prabhupada: That is not the denied. Dinosaur you may not have seen, it may be existing some other... Neither have I seen the 8,400,000 different species of, different forms of life. But my source of knowledge is different. You are experimenter with imperfect senses. I am taking from the perfect who has seen, who knows this; therefore my knowledge is perfect. Therefore the same example: I am receiving knowledge from my mother, "Here is your father," and you are trying to search out where is your father. You don't go to the mother, but you are searching out. Therefore, however you may search, your knowledge always will be imperfect.
Syamasundara: And your knowledge says that millions of years ago there were higher forms of living entities on this planet.
Prabhupada: Oh, yes. Because our Vedic information is that the first creation is the most intelligent, that is the most intellectual personality within this universe, Brahma. So how we can say..., how we can accept your theory that intellect develops? We are receiving the Vedic knowledge from Brahma, so perfect. So that is the evidence. The first creature was so perfect.
Bali-mardana: You are accepting authority anyway; we are accepting Darwin's authority that he went to these islands and found these animals. How do we know he went to the islands and found the animals?
Syamasundara: Because you can go there now and find them; they are still there.
Bali-mardana: But you have to go there to make, to make your point and deduct it. (break)
Svarupa Damodara: (indistinct) survival of fittest, but he is not going into the (indistinct) who posed this, how it has been done, how it is growing to that theory, so his theories are not complete.
Prabhupada: His theory, it is not science. It is suggestion, guess.
Syamasundara: They call it "doctrine of natural selection," not theory.
Prabhupada: So doctrine; doctrine should be fact, but Darwin's theory, so far Darwin's theory...
Syamasundara: It's not called theory, it's doctrine.
Bali-mardana: What they mean by doctrine is that they can't agree on it and say it's fact. There are so many short-comings. They will call it a doctrine but they won't call it a fact. That's practically the whole story in scientific research: the real scientists, they never call anything a solid fact; it's always a theory or a doctrine because they never find a perfect enough conclusion which takes into account everything and perfectly reconciles...
Prabhupada: What is that uncertainty? What do you call that?
Syamasundara: It's called Theory of Uncertainty. Heisenberg's Theory of Uncertainty.
Prabhupada: That is also theory.
Syamasundara: Yes. That has to do with atomic particles.
Svarupa Damodara: Accepting the (indistinct), when we find out the smallest particle in the atom, it was a theory; it was accepted for about twenty years.
Syamasundara: That was long before, in Greek times, Democritus.
Svarupa Damodara: But the real theory started by Darwin, it was accepted for several years, but later on, with new advancement, his theory changed. His theory became disproved, that "What you are saying, it is not right, it is not final." So his theory is being changed. So same thing, Darwin's theory is also changing.
Syamasundara: But his impact upon the thinking of the world so completely changed the whole conception of...
Prabhupada: That is now changing again. So what is the use of that, such change?
Syamasundara: Well, you have to investigate, because he is important for our...
Prabhupada: No. That's all right. We will investigate; and a theory which changes, it will change, that's all. It is not fact. The sun rising is a fact. It cannot change.
Syamasundara: Still, you say if there were high forms of, say Brahma, in Brahma's time or millions of years ago, there were also other high animals besides men?
Prabhupada: All I say is that all kinds of different classes of forms were existing, since the creation.
Syamasundara: On this planet there were higher forms?
Prabhupada: Why are you taking this planet? We are talking of the whole creation. In the creation everything is there.
Syamasundara: If you expect me to understand this, I have to see it on this planet.
Prabhupada: That is not knowledge.
Bali-mardana: Possibly there were and possibly there weren't.
Syamasundara: You tell me that Rama and some other higher creatures lived on this planet so many millions of years ago, so I can expect some day to find evidence of that?
Prabhupada: The evidence is the authority, Vedic literature.
Bali-mardana: What other authority will you accept? If you dig up a bone and make a test with your own senses and accept that as an authority...
Prabhupada: Bone authority. So you will be satisfied with your own authority. We have got our different... If you don't accept my authority, then I don't accept your authority.
Syamasundara: It would just seem if there were bones surviving for millions of years, why not cities, why not chariots, why not...?
Prabhupada: Yes. During Ramacandra's time there were chariots. Everything was there.
Bali-mardana: They have found pieces of chariots and pieces of cities.
Syamasundara: Not millions of years ago.
Bali-mardana: How do they know it's not millions of years ago? What is their test for proving?
Prabhupada: That millions, that is also bogus. You see? In the human history there is no history more than three thousand years. They are talking of millions of years. Why?
Syamasundara: You are a scientist. What other ways do they date geological findings? How do they date them?
Svarupa Damodara: Now it is Carbon 14 is the most reliable technique.
Syamasundara: Before they discovered that, how did they do it? They knew the Pleistocene, the Pliocene, all these different ages. How did they date them?
Bali-mardana: (indistinct) They all remain their own postulations according to their own sense impressions, and because the initial format is imperfect, then the conclusion has to be imperfect. So knowledge always remains fallible and mutable, whatever basis they put it on. It is what they have derived out of their own sense impressions, imperfect.
Syamasundara: Yes, I admit it, but I say that...
Bali-mardana: So dealing on a whole range of imperfections...
Syamasundara: Anyone can argue on that level and say anything, but what I want to know are the facts.
Bali-mardana: The facts are there, but you can accept the facts as Darwin presents them or as the Vedas present them or as anyone presents them.
Svarupa Damodara: These are all controlled by the force of nature. For example, you do not find evidence, scientific evidence, so-called they've got from (indistinct). It does not mean anything. It is all subject to the course of nature. So (indistinct).
Syamasundara: I'm a Darwinist; I'm still not convinced. Because you still haven't proven to me that the layers of earth that are far, far below are not millions of years old. You say that they may be newly formed, but...
Bali-mardana: They haven't proven that they are millions of years old.
Syamasundara: Well, I'm not a geologist...
Prabhupada: My charge is that you cannot give history of human society more than three thousand years; how you speak of millions of years? That is my charge.
Syamasundara: Written history...
Prabhupada: No. Suppose a child says that "Millions of years ago it happened like this," but I would say, "You were born maybe three years ago. How you speak of millions of years?" That is my charge.
Syamasundara: I don't know how geologists date earth layers...
Prabhupada: They bluff everything.

Syamasundara: But even if, let's say the deepest layer is only five hundred years old, but still the ones on top are newer. So in the lowest layer, there are no chariots, cities...
Prabhupada: We can rather believe the Bhagavad-gita, which gives a description from one, twelve hours duration of life, millions of years. So we can believe such authority. You can actually gain...
Syamasundara: Just like when you are dreaming, you may think it's millions of years, and it's only five minutes. You wake up and you've only been asleep five minutes.
Prabhupada: Yes. Actually, according to modern scientists, the law of relativity, so everyone speaks with this relative knowledge. It is not perfect. Everyone speaks with relative knowledge, that's all. Therefore we should accept knowledge from a person who is not within this relativity.
Syamasundara: There is also some scientific evidence that where there is land now, it was once water, and where there is water now, it was once land. That the oceans reversed...
Prabhupada: Yes. That we accept.
Syamasundara: ...so it's quite possible that if there were great civilizations existing, that they, all remains are swallowed, with no trace.
Prabhupada: That is, everyday we see. One day we walk on the beaches, and the next day it is covered with water. So that is not very difficult to understand. But when the covered with water portion you cannot experiment, how can you say what is there within? Has Darwin gone within the sea, layers, studying the bottom of the sea?
Syamasundara: Yes. Where it has become land. And you find that there are sea shells, sea animals, in the layer, in the next layer up more complex forms, in the next layer more complex forms...
Prabhupada: I mean to say, but there is already sea. Have they gone down the sea and excavated the level of the sea, gone down?
Bali-mardana: Even if they...
Prabhupada: That we do not know. That we do not know. Neither he knows. Because we cannot accept that. Nobody has said that they have excavated down the bottom of the sea. But you also said that bottom may be opened at one, sometime. So unless it is opened, your experiment is insufficient.
Bali-mardana: Even if you were to grant that the first life forms on this planet were simple one-celled life, that does not mean that more complex life did not begin earlier on other planets. The theory is not aborted. It may be you can discount the possibility of...
Prabhupada: The whole thing is that Dr. Frog, famous story. He comes to this country, Dr. Frog's understanding. He has studied the three-feet-wide well, and he says he is satisfied with that. He has nothing to do with the Atlantic Ocean. But Atlantic Ocean is also a reservoir of water, and that well is also a reservoir of water. But there is a vast difference. So we take knowledge of who has created Atlantic Ocean. Therefore our knowledge is perfect. What do you say?
Syamasundara: I just wanted to try to cover this from every angle so that Darwinists will not be able to argue. Today I'd like to find out how they date earth layers, how geologists find...
Prabhupada: No. Your geologists have given, "It may be millions of years ago." They say like that.
Syamasundara: They estimate, but there must be some basis for their estimation.

Bali-mardana: They don't even agree amongst one another. They argue. I attended college with scientists, and they argue amongst one another; they don't agree on their own scientific evidence.
Syamasundara: But at least they all agree that there is several million years old, many millions of years old, at least.
Bali-mardana: No. Not necessarily.
Syamasundara: The Pleistocene was two hundred million years...
Bali-mardana: Just an assembly of fools. You can get all the fools to agree on the same thing. It doesn't make anyone...
Syamasundara: Well I still want to find out how to...
Prabhupada: (indistinct) krsna nama koro bhai ar sab niche, parai gab pap nahi yoni ache piche (?). Our real problem is birth, death. All these scientist, they could not solve any of these problems, neither they could argue them. Many Darwinists came and died. They could not stop death. Kata choto dayana na mari meri jao (?).
Syamasundara: Tomorrow we can discuss ethical evolution, how ethics evolved. That is also part of this doctrine.
Prabhupada: Ethic morality?
Syamasundara: How morality is also a product of evolution.
Prabhupada: We change morality within six months. The most immoral man you can make the most moral man within six months. This is practically happening.
Syamasundara: It also helps the fittest to survive.
Prabhupada: You may not be fit, but we can make you fit.
Syamasundara: That's what I mean. If you become moral you become fittest to survive. That is also his theory, doctrine.
Prabhupada: Yes. So that we can do within six months.
Syamasundara: He says that at some point a man who had developed sympathy for others, he was able to survive because he would cooperate with them to survive when others were killing each other, like that. So gradually morality also evolved. Tomorrow maybe we should finish Darwin. (break)
Prabhupada: An animal is put in some certain atmosphere, he adjusts. But there are different types animals. Just like we see while walking (in) severe cold, we try to adjust by covering. Others, the birds, the skylark, so on, they do not adjust.
Syamasundara: His finding is that new types of species will come out, which will be better adapted. The swans, if it becomes too cold, they will die.
Prabhupada: They are better than us, than human beings?
Atreya Rsi: What the theory is all about is that, for example, if you have many many swans living in one place, those who cannot adjust will be extinct after many, many years, and those who can adjust will live. In effect, what he tried to prove was that Krsna's law, nature's law, is perfect. But he was missing Krsna. In other words, what the proof is very scientific, but it is lacking.
Prabhupada: Yes. He is adding zero, without one.
Atreya Rsi: That's right, Prabhupada.
Prabhupada: Therefore the value remains zero. He couldn't find the one, so that the value of the zero at once increases.
Atreya Rsi: But there are some great scientists like Newton who studied many, many, many years and made many, many theories and then they gave it up when they realized that they couldn't go further. Newton, at a very early age, like forty-three years old, went to a monastery.

Syamasundara: We discussed Newton's philosophy.
Prabhupada: Sir Isaac Newton?
Syamasundara: Yes.
Prabhupada: He was Englishman.
Syamasundara: But in Africa we discussed his philosophy.
Prabhupada: He died at the age of twenty-three. His picture is there in Westminster Abbey.
Syamasundara: His tomb, his grave. He is buried there.
Prabhupada: Westminster Abbey has become now a museum.
Syamasundara: Graveyard and museum.
Prabhupada: People go to see, tourists.
Syamasundara: I think it cost us sixteen shillings for us to see. Remember we saw King (indistinct). So they're making some money.
Prabhupada: Yes. For some period, Elizabeth to Queen Victoria, the English nation advanced in so many ways. They wanted to record it that they are the greatest nation in the world. But the basic principle was how to get money from outside in London. That was the basic thing. By advertising that actually by nature they are very impoverished, they have no sufficient food, even; their nature. And they wanted to be greatest nation. By nature they are not very much favored. Now they are coming again in the lap of nature.
Syamasundara: Darwin's theory about them would be that because their environment was not very suitable for farming or mining, no natural resources, therefore their brains developed and they were able to survive.
Prabhupada: That we accept. That we accept, that we have to adjust things according to circumstances. That is acceptable. But finally, if God does not approve of it, it does not happen. Pratividhi. Pratividhi, counteraction. Tavat tanu-bhrtam tvad-upeksitanam. Pratividhi. We make counteractivities for adjusting things, but unless it is approved by the Supreme Lord, that adjustment also will not be very much (indistinct), very much helpful. Balasya neha pitarau nrsimha. Just like a small child, the nature's way is the parents has got affection to take care. At that time, if the parents do not take care, the child cannot live. But the parents' taking care is not all. If the child is condemned by the Supreme Lord, in spite of the parents taking care, it will not be happy, or it will not exist. Parents' care is natural. Generally it so happens by the parents' care the child is happy, but in spite of parents' care the child is unhappy, then we have to go to the Lord. Is it not? Just like when a man is diseased, the counteraction is physician, medicine. Generally it is expected by attendance of good physician and using good medicine that the patient becomes cured. But it is also seen that in spite of all careful attention, scientific medicine, he dies. Then what is that?
Syamasundara: Darwin would say he wasn't well enough equipped to survive.
Prabhupada: That is the deficiency, that you will not be well equipped if Krsna doesn't wish you to survive. That means you will not be able to counteract with all the counteractions. You cannot.
Atreya Rsi: In other words, Prabhupada, nature's arrangements, you are saying it is Krsna's arrangement. In other words, when Krsna wishes something it happens in a natural way.
Prabhupada: Yes.
Atreya Rsi: Nothing in an unnatural way, but in a natural way. But it is then Krsna's desire.

Prabhupada: Yes. This is all just like a child is protected by the parents, that is also natural. But in spite of his taking care, the child dies, suffers, that is also natural.
Syamasundara: Just like some children are born with blood diseases or some incurable disease; the parents take all care, but they still have to die young.
Prabhupada: Yes. So then it is to be understood that different natural laws are working, and they are working under one controller. That is God. Just like we are taking so many services from this electricity current, but all this electricity current are working under one leader in the powerhouse, the resident engineer. From him, the original electricity current is coming, is generated. And we are utilizing the same current in different varieties, purposes. So then, just like electric current, the same electric current working in this machine, in a way; another machine another way. It may be contradiction, but the power is the same. According to the machine, the same example: one machine is cooler, one machine is heater, although the current is the same. Parasya saktir vividhaiva sruyate svabhaviki jnana-bala-kriya ca. Everywhere God's energy is working as if natural.
Syamasundara: Just like a tiger's body and a deer's body--the tiger kills the deer, but the same current is working in both. One survives, one does not survive.
Prabhupada: Nobody will survive. This is called karma. This is activity. The body is the field of activity. You are given license to act with this body for some time. That's all. No question of survival. Nobody will survive. You can act for some time.
Syamasundara: By survival he means species. The species will survive.
Prabhupada: Any species. Nobody will survive. That is also false theory. Nobody will survive. Where is the species that is surviving?
Syamasundara: Just like horses. Horses, they have found in the fossils and millions of years ago, they say millions of years ago horses were there. Slightly different forms, but still they were horses.
Prabhupada: So different forms, just like human beings, formerly they were very tall, and they are reducing their stature. At the end of Kali-yuga they will be stature like this. This is not change of the species. This is changing, just like your father is taller than you, is he not? Is he not taller?
Syamasundara: No. I'm taller than he is. But they say because our generation got better foodstuffs than our parents.
Prabhupada: So therefore, according to circumstances, the stature is changing but not the species. It is the same human, but formerly the human being was taller, stouter; now they are reducing in strength, in stature, in memory, in duration of life, span of life, in mercy. That is stated in Bhagavatam. They cannot change all these statements.
Atreya Rsi: This changing of human size also may be a scientific thing, scientifically because of our condition, because of our state of consciousness and because of conditions...
Prabhupada: Yes. Under certain conditions, changing. (break)
Syamasundara: ...research. They found that atomic particles vibrate at a certain frequency, a certain rate of vibration, and that elements such as lead, iron, all the different chemical elements, disintegrate gradually, and the atomic particles vibrate out of the element and change the structure of the element gradually, and this is a constant, what they call life of the element, and the constant number of years before it disintegrates into some other element. So this life they have measured, and they have a table or a chart, and by this half-life formula they can determine how old a rock is by how quickly the isotopes are disintegrating. So according to their calculation, the layers of the earth go down for many millions of years; and in those lower disintegrating. So according to their calculation, the layers of the earth go down for many millions of years; and in those lower layers, millions of years old, there is either no form of life or very, very simple form of life. There is no evidence of any complex forms.
Prabhupada: Bolo... (Bengali)
Svarupa Damodara: (indistinct--regarding the determining of the age of rocks using strontium and crystal technology)
Syamasundara: The rock is at least three billion; maybe it's older.
Svarupa Damodara: Yes, maybe older, but does not give the exact age. We do not know.
Syamasundara: But the point is that they have determined that there are rock structures in the earth very, very, very old and that these contain no evidence of any complex forms of life. So that if there is a statement that there were higher forms of life millions of years ago existing on this planet, there is no evidence ever found of that.
Prabhupada: So why they're trying to find out evidence from the rocks, not from any other source?
Syamasundara: Well as civilizations come and go, they leave remains, evidence behind of their...
Prabhupada: "Civilization goes" means? Where goes?
Syamasundara: Well, if people come and they...
Prabhupada: Do they come, and they are still living? They are still there? Just like my great-grand..., great-grandfather is living. So I am his descendant.
Syamasundara: But where is he?
Prabhupada: Where is he? You want to see him? Therefore you are childish.
Syamasundara: No. I want to find his remains.
Prabhupada: You want to see my great-great-great-great-grandfather?
Syamasundara: But he must have left some remains.
Prabhupada: I am the remaining. I am his descendant.
Syamasundara: But he made no tools, he had no house?
Prabhupada: Who said? You said. You said that there may not, but because my fore... I can make tools; naturally, my grandfather, he can make too. So what is that making tools?
Syamasundara: No. But why weren't there any tools left behind for us to find, remnants?
Prabhupada: What?
Syamasundara: Final remains and tools or other evidence of other men.
Prabhupada: What is the use of tools? Tools are used for the carpenters, and we are not carpenters.
Syamasundara: But if there were higher forms of men living...
Prabhupada: Then he's (indistinct) with the carpenters, not the philosophers.
Syamasundara: ...they must have lived in cities.
Prabhupada: My forefathers were philosophers. They did not require any tools.

Syamasundara: They required no houses?
Prabhupada: No. Even they required, they called some carpenters and they did it. Because there is no tools, therefore there is no civilization?
Syamasundara: But tools, not houses or anything men have to use, there should be some remains left behind from their civilization.
Prabhupada: What is remains? Remains means just like the coal, that is the remains.
Syamasundara: Coal.
Prabhupada: Yes.
Syamasundara: Coal is the remains of trees, plants...
Prabhupada: Yes. This is the remains.
Svarupa Damodara: (indistinct) coal, oil, petroleum.
Syamasundara: That means there was some evidence that there were... If we look in coal beds we find remains of trees that were very simple, no complex forms of trees. Now trees are much more complex.
Prabhupada: Complex or simple, it doesn't matter. There were trees.
Svarupa Damodara: Actually, the coal doesn't say whether the tree was so complex or not.
Syamasundara: No, but they find impressions from leaves and the carboniferous age, they find that the main trees, plants, twigs, all very simple forms like our...
Prabhupada: Our evidence is intelligence, not with tools and (indistinct). Our evidence is intelligence. We find out, we get Vedic information by disciplic succession--highly intelligent. So that is our evidence. Not the tools.
Syamasundara: The evidence which is written and spoken in...
Prabhupada: Yes. And that is coming by sruti, by hearing. Just like Vyasadeva heard from Narada, Narada heard from Brahma, millions and millions of years ago. If you take, according to our calculation, Brahma's age, Brahma's one day we cannot calculate. It is now some, so many millions of years past, and still it is not even Brahma's one day. So many millions of years. Because in Brahma's one day seventy-two..., fourteen, fourteen Manus come and go. And each Manu's age is 72,000,000. One million years means 4,300,000's of years. So such 72,000,000 years next complete, one Manu's life, and there are fourteen Manus in Brahma's one day. So millions and trillions and billions of years, that is not very astonishing to us, because it is not even one day of Brahma. But Brahma was born, and intelligent philosophy is still existing from the date of Brahma's birth. Brahma was first educated by God. That is our calculation. So we get in the Vedas such intelligent information; therefore we understand that our forefathers was very, very learned.
Syamasundara: For instance, the Sanskrit language was so perfect...
Prabhupada: Yes. Everything, wonderful. So we are not carpenters, that we have to find out tools; we are brahmanas.
Syamasundara: So if the earth is so old, for instance, it could have undergone many transformations...
Prabhupada: Yes. That doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. After one day of Brahma there is devastation. So Brahma lives for one hundred years according to his calculation. So each day there is devastation. So many devastation passes in one month of Brahma, then such twelve months makes one years, and such hundred years will be. So there is no calculation of devastation, how many devastations. And Brahma's one day it is calculated 5,400 Manus are born in one month of Brahma. So our calculation is like that. We are not very much amazed of hearing millions and trillions. It is nothing. In our historical records is billions and trillions of years.
Syamasundara: So even though millions and trillions of years ago they find no evidence in the rocks...
Prabhupada: That does not mean that there is no civilization. That is their imperfect knowledge.
Svarupa Damodara: Actually, our so-called modern scientific stories and knowledge is so empiric it's now (indistinct) on complete proof. It is always stands to have objectionable work, sides; so it is not perfect at all. Just like from Srila Prabhupada's Easy Journey to Other Planets, Srila Prabhupada mentioned the discovery of the anti-proton, that the scientists got Nobel Prizes in 1959, and Prabhupada gives all information from Bhagavad-gita, anything, is already there; Prabhupada has said it. They say anti-proton... They just discovered the anti-proton, but they still think it's some matter, that is not..., they say anti-proton but still they think that it is connected with matter. But Prabhupada said it is not matter, it is spirit. Differentiation between matter and antimatter. Matter is material thing; antimatter is spirit or (indistinct). So Prabhupada comments so nicely about the so-called modern scientists to do further research on this concept of antimatter, but they have come to an understanding about the spirit, they come to a point. So our knowledge is what you call a modern scientific findings or evidences always subject to changes also...
Prabhupada: This must be changing because the instruments by which we acquire knowledge, they are imperfect. So by our so-called research and sensuous acceptance of knowledge, that is never perfect. It cannot be perfect.
Syamasundara: Just like they say the rate of disintegration of the atomic particles of an element is constant. But it may not be constant; perhaps in earlier times it was faster or slower--so many possibilities.
Prabhupada: Yes. So the so-called scientists and philosophers who do not follow the system of ascending knowledge, knowledge received from higher authorities, they are not perfect. They cannot have any perfect knowledge, either research work with the blunt imperfect senses. They will not (indistinct). So whatever they say, we take it as imperfect--dream. But when Krsna says that "I enter into the universe," vistabhyaham idam krtsnam ekamsena sthito jagat... The weightlessness of the planets, the scientists describe in so many ways, but that is not very perfect. What is the cause of weightlessness? I have, what is called, (indistinct).
Syamasundara: Because of the orbits, different orbits of the planets cause weightlessness.
Bali-mardana: Centrifugal force.
Prabhupada: Centrifugal.
Syamasundara: When planets go around the sun they go in such a speed, there is no mass.
Prabhupada: So, but who has set on the speed? How the speed is going on? That is not explained. But we have got our explanation. Krsna says that "I enter into each and every universe and planet, and I keep them floating." That is understandable. Just like we have, in our childhood we used to, I mean to say, fly paper balloon by forcing into it some camphor smoke. Did you do it? We did this in our childhood. Such a big paper balloon, and then you take camphor, so much, and we struck up and burn it, and camphor is burning, it is producing too much--what is called--black smoke; and it becomes big, big smoke, it goes, very nice. So if the camphor smoke entered into the paper balloon can fly it, then God cannot fly all the universes by entering into it?
Svarupa Damodara: Another example is lot of these astronauts go to the moon, and sometimes they are afraid, they call the transition from the earth's gravitational force and the moon's gravitational force, there is a layer, this transition from one to another it is very critical. So they said that when they, these rockets or these Apollo instruments either go up or go down, they have to go to a certain angle, very specific, and the angle is slightly changed, so they'll be either circulating the moon or either they'll be circulating the earth. They'll never be able to come down or go up, but they'll be floating like... There's no control.
Prabhupada: Without any control.
Syamasundara: Because where the two gravitational pulls meet, there is a certain force. If you don't pass through it at the right angle, then you are caught in it.
Svarupa Damodara: If you are not going right in the angle, say for example he has to go..., he's coming down so he has to go at 45-degree angles, slanting; he has to go 45-degree angles, but it changed by mistake, they put at certain degree angle, he will never come down. He'll be just circulating around, floating.
Prabhupada: So, in the (indistinct) stage, we are dependent on the laws of nature, and we still, we are declaring we are free from any control. We are making our own proposition and theories.
Bali-mardana: They're always saying their conquest over nature.
Prabhupada: But where is the conquest of nature? Now if there is a mistake of two degrees, you have to go round forever. What is the independence? Vikathante. The exact word used in this connection in the Bhagavata, that these people talk all nonsense, (Sanskrit). Under the influence of illusory energy they have become mad, and they are talking all nonsense.
Syamasundara: I didn't know we were going to have a class today, but for the next class I wanted to read that article about heredity, genetics, how they think they might be able to reproduce life in the future.
Prabhupada: Again "in future."
Syamasundara: I have that article, I want to read it and study it first. I wasn't prepared for today.
Prabhupada: The future... Any fool can say "In future I shall prove." Then what is the difference between scientists and the fool? "Trust no future, however pleasant."
Syamasundara: But Darwin is the one who introduced this whole concept that we are evolving toward something better.
Prabhupada: That we accept. That we accept. Just like we are now in human form of life. Now we can go, can make our position better. Either we go in so many higher planetary systems or we go to Vaikuntha.
Syamasundara: In terms of species actually living on this planet, he thinks that we have come up from apes, now we may go up to higher forms of man or species.
Prabhupada: That is already... The apes are already there. You are also there.
Bali-mardana: The idea is that if they can sufficiently understand the process of evolution and know its principles then they can control it, they can manipulate it to their own ends.
Prabhupada: There is information.
Bali-mardana: They can produce their own eternal superhuman being. They know how...
Prabhupada: Superhuman... Krsna conscious people, they are superhuman being. They are (indistinct).
Bali-mardana: They had a big meeting recently in Europe of the foremost scientists, chemists, and researchers, and they predicted that by the year 2050 the scientists will be able to make the superhuman eternal human being. Then they started asking themselves, "Well, who will decide? Who will play God? If we can make an eternal person or manipulate, who will decide?" What if they make a hundred Hitlers or some demoniac scientists who knows how to do this makes a hundred Hitlers. So even if their whole thing is (indistinct), they'll misuse whatever power they acquire by understanding the laws of nature...
Prabhupada: They can produce for human being, many (indistinct)?
Syamasundara: They call it the genetical xerox machine.
Bali-mardana: They can analyze someone's genes. Say they pick my genes, and by their chemical structure they can reproduce that structure and make a hundred men, just like me--the same brain, the same body, the same mentality, everything.
Prabhupada: That's all right. But who made you? Just like I have written one letter; you can make hundred copies. But I have written the letter. Similarly, there may be hundreds of copies of your personality, but who made you?
Svarupa Damodara: (indistinct) certain persons taking our material (indistinct) some people are more intelligent than others, scientists, Einstein (indistinct) different brains than other people.
Prabhupada: Our explanation is that from previous life he is modeled. That is coming. It's continuation. So Darwin said also that one's... (break)
Syamasundara: So Darwin said that also, that one's superior traits are passed on to his children, like that. And then the superior traits survive over the inferior traits, and so on.
Prabhupada: And where he goes? After transferring to the children, where Mr. Darwin goes?
Syamasundara: He disintegrates into matter.
Bali-mardana: ...material. There's no spirit, just a combination of material elements.
Prabhupada: Then if you are going again to be mixed with the elements, then why you are bothering your head about children?
Syamasundara: He's concerned on a social level...
Prabhupada: In the beginning, in the beginning you are in the matter. By evolution you have come to, again you are going to the matter. In the beginning you are matter and at the end you're going to be matter.
Syamasundara: He's concerned that the society can be made better by this understanding.
Prabhupada: So why do you concern with the society? You are going to be (indistinct). It may be better or no, but it doesn't matter.
Syamasundara: He had a vague idea that societies or species would evolve toward something better, that evolutio...
Prabhupada: That is a fact, but not that Mr. Darwin's foolish theory that he's going to be matter. He'll remain spirit but another species of life, another form of life. That another form of life will decide whether you are degraded or elevated.
Syamasundara: Darwin passed on his traits to his son, Charles Darwin, and his son's great contribution to the world was that the moon was moving away from the earth at the rate of five inches per year. So what good is that knowledge?
Prabhupada: What kind..., in what way you give such an evolution? It may be ten inches or five inches or his (indistinct). That conclusion anyone can give. Any rascal can say anything, and what is the contribution? Just like modern day's art. You just make your brush like this and it becomes art. You see?
Syamasundara: Relative values.
Prabhupada: Relative values. Now you imagine what is there. This is the mentality.
Syamasundara: There's no absolute scale of value in the material world.
Svarupa Damodara: They're speculating that the genes of these supposedly very intelligent people...
Prabhupada: The superhuman being is already there in what we call demigods. Brahma, Visnu, Mahesvara, Indra, Candra, they are superhuman beings, already there. What he will make? Let him make one ant first of all. Let me see that you have made one ant; then talk of superhuman. You have not been able to create even an ant, so how do you dare to say superhuman without (indistinct)?
Bali-mardana: According to modern information, man now is living longer, is more healthy and is more well off than ever before.
Prabhupada: There is another nonsense. I have said my grandmother lived ninety-six years, but I don't expect I shall live ninety-six years. My father did not live more than eighty-one years; so gradually the span of life is decreasing. They are not healthy enough. Decreasing means they are not getting proper food or proper bodily comforts; therefore they're decreasing their life.
Syamasundara: The statistics are so open to error there's no way they can say...
Bali-mardana: They baffle the population. Everyone believes now "I'm living longer. I have more chances to live a healthy life than ever before." They think this is what this modern society gives him, a chance to live longer.
Syamasundara: By discovering new medicines and new techniques to improve our health.
Prabhupada: So where is the medicine which stops disease? You are discovering medicine, and many new diseases are coming out, so where is the stopper?
Bali-mardana: That's supposed to come. That is the promise.
Prabhupada: Promise, fool can promise anything. And...
Syamasundara: And instead all they do is...
Prabhupada: That is a different thing.
Syamasundara: ...add more wars.
Svarupa Damodara: President Nixon has made a promise that very shortly that this cancer disease should be cured. So he has allotted a lot of money for the coming three years and this and that, giving all scientists (indistinct), he is saying he is going to stop this death from cancer, but...
Prabhupada: Suppose he stops death from cancer. Can he stop death at all? Well then? What is it? He'll direct some other decision?
Syamasundara: If Darwin's theory is correct, some new form of cancer will evolve which will survive...

Prabhupada: Why...? Any disease which you want you can, all right, you can check the disease. Therefore our conclusion is that however scientifically you advanced you make, you cannot stop birth, death, old age and disease. That is our conclusion. So why should we waste our time for that purpose? We are utilizing our time, and after giving up this body we may go back to home, back to Godhead. That is our business. But everyone has to (indistinct) give up his body. Mr. Darwin and his company will give up this body like cats and dog. Now we should give up this body for higher elevation of life. Therefore our philosophy is better (indistinct).
Syamasundara: There's a corollary to his theory of evolution that our standards of morality have also evolved from primitive stages. For instance, in a group..., within a group of apelike creatures who were normally fighting with each other for dominance, one may develop the quality of sympathy for someone else. So by that sympathy he cooperates with that other person and together they survive when the others die. So that evolution of sympathy, morality, love, compassion--the good qualities of the human being--have evolved due to necessity, evolution, survival of the fittest.
Bali-mardana: The thing is this whole, this perspective of evolution... There doesn't have to be a sequence, that one came before the other. They all were there. Just like you take a ray of the sunshine that's in this room. It's come from the sun, but simultaneously it's occurring with the sun. It's not there as a sequential evolution of that particle...
Prabhupada: The sunshine, sunshine... Just like sunshine. You can collect time according to the sunshine. The morning sun shining is called 6 a.m., and then 7 a.m., 8 a.m., 9 a.m., like that. The shine. But this 6 a.m. shining will be somewhere else also, although here it is 8 a.m.
Syamasundara: That's a relative measurement.
Prabhupada: So the sunshine is existing always the same.

It is relatively understood by others. Otherwise sun is fixed up in his position and is shining all over the world.
Syamasundara: The speed of light is constant also, it is said.
Prabhupada: Yes. It does not change as it reaches. When it may reach, it is already there.
Syamasundara: It takes one particle of sunlight eight minutes to travel from the sun to here.
Prabhupada: That may be, but the sun's...
Svarupa Damodara: This constant can be taken (indistinct) astronomy (indistinct).
Prabhupada: Anyway, the sunbeam, the sunshine, is always working. How it is constantly coming? Just like heat and the fire. The heat is always coming out of the fire, always.
Bali-mardana: According to a point of observation, there may appear to be a sequence, or a beginning or an end to evolution...
Syamasundara: If we look back--say our written history goes back three thousand years--if we look back within that span, according to Darwin, our levels of consciousness are getting increasingly higher.
Prabhupada: No. We say lower. We say lower. Degraded.
Bali-mardana: They're basing their quality or what is the better level of consciousness and what is more (indistinct) sense gratification.
Syamasundara: Technical advancements. Actually, morality hasn't evolved. The ancient Greeks had a much higher sense of morality than the British or Darwin's time.

Prabhupada: Yes. Degrading.
Svarupa Damodara: (indistinct) degrading (indistinct). We see every day, every moment.
Prabhupada: So we have seen in our childhood, that also. No voucher or receipt. I'll tell you one little story. My father was dealing in cloth. So supposing he has come, my customer, he wants so many things. So I haven't got stock all of these things, but I wrote down his order, that you are market broker, I say just get these things immediately from the market. You go to the particular person who has got the stock and you order him to my shop, "Such and such you send me." So you have ordered for say twenty, fifty men. So their men are coming with a load of cloth, and he'll simply ask the firm's name: "This is Rajaram (indistinct)?" And someone declares, "Yes, yes." But no voucher. He simply asks whether this firm is Rajaram (indistinct), and somebody nods, "Yes, yes." So he drops the bundle of cloth. It may be five hundred, (or) thousand rupees' worth or more than that. So similarly, many porters drop, because I require so many things. Now, you are my broker, you come, you see the stack of cloth, you ask my clerk, "Just credit this from such and such firm." But firm has sent without any voucher, without any (indistinct), and the porter simply asks whether this is the same firm, and somebody nods and we (makes noise like stamping something), that's all. Then you come, you pick up so many bundles, just note down "This has come from such and such firm." You note down. Then my clerk notes it. This is transaction. And out of many such bundles, you find that you did not order this, "Wherefrom it came? It is not mine," so we set aside. Three days after, one (indistinct) comes, "Sir, on such and such date I dropped a bundle here which did not belong to you, so please give me this back." "Oh, you will see there is some in the (indistinct). What is yours you can take back." And he picks up, "Sir, this is my bundle," "All right, take it." He's unknown, but simply he comes and says that "I dropped one bundle here which does not belong to you. By mistake I dropped it," and I say, "Yes. So many bundles there are, you can take whatever is yours." This was transaction. Then on the due payment day, those who supplied the cloths, they come to take payment and they say, "Sir, on such and such day, such and such cloth was supplied to you." No voucher, nothing. I open my book: "Yes, yes. That's all right." So he says that "This is the price," so much money is due payment. So he calculates, "Yes." So he pays the money and then, when taking money, he puts a stamp and signs on the book. Now in the meantime, so many transactions we'll see, how much faithfully it was going on. So how much we have now became degraded: we supply something to somebody, we take three copies of voucher; one he takes, one we keep on book, one he gives (indistinct); then also he will, try also, cheat, again. So much morally we have improved. I am speaking, say within, when I am child's age, now I am seventy-six. I may be fourteen, fifteen years old, like that. Fifty years ago these things were going on. Fifty or sixty, sixty years ago, the business dealings was so easy and plain.
Syamasundara: So to become increasingly complex--now we have computers and all--doesn't necessarily mean we are becoming more and more superior.
Prabhupada: No. They are becoming more inferior. There is no necessity of computer machine.
Syamasundara: So even though there may be an evolution from simple to more complex, there's no evolution from inferior to superior.

Prabhupada: That is not improvement. No. Now human society has become very complex. I don't trust you, you don't trust me. I keep my dog so that you may not come in my house--"Beware of Dogs"--and if you enter I can fire you, there is law. So what is this consciousness? Therefore we get from our sastra that even you may receive your enemy at home, you will receive him so friendly way that he'll forget that you are his enemy. (indistinct) satram (indistinct) visvastham akuto 'bhayam. He should feel himself so confidential that he's not near his enemy. His dealing and behavior are so nice. The morality is that "Whatever you may be, you have come to my house, you are my guest, so I must offer you all kinds of hospitality, never mind you are my enemy. Now you are my guest." So how much ethically improved this society was. "Yes. We are enemy, so when we fight we shall fight like enemies. But now we have come to my home, you are my guest, honorary guest, I must receive you with honor." That was being done Mahabharata time.
Syamasundara: In the ancient times, the Neanderthal man, the Cro-Magnon man--they always are saying that these people were killers and hunters; they had to kill to survive.
Prabhupada: That is Darwin's philosophy, not my philosophy.
Syamasundara: But there is no difference between the oldest cavemen and the men today. We're still killing, still hunting, still fighting. Same things.
Prabhupada: No. Suppose just like Jesus Christ instructed his disciples, "Thou shall not kill." Say two thousand years ago in the Western countries, the men were killers, that's all. But we'll see Bhagavad-gita, five thousand years ago, Krsna is arguing that "If our women become widows then they'll be polluted. There will be varna-sankara, unwanted children, the society will go to hell." How much evolved system. Five thousand years. It is a question of place. It is a question of place. If Darwin says... Here in the Bible it is said that "Thou shall not kill," so that means two thousand years ago they were simply killers. That does not mean five thousand years there were no highly elevated personalities. That is his lack of studying. He is too much localized. He has no broadened knowledge, neither he has studied all the books, contemporary books; therefore he has poor fund of knowledge. He's very poor in his knowledge. Just like, still, there are many Americans... You Americans are completely different from others. You cannot say all the Americans are drunkards and irresponsible; therefore, they are also. Side by side some moral is still there. You don't drink; you don't take meat; you are all God conscious; side by side there is. So how you can write history that "Such and such, 1971, '72, all Americans were LSD"? How you can conclude like that?
Syamasundara: They may find three or four bodies...
Prabhupada: Even they may find one, they cannot conclude.
Syamasundara: Yes. Right. That's all. They can't tell from three or four samples what everything was like.
Prabhupada: That's not possible.
Bali-mardana: Just like if five thousand years from now some archreologists came to Los Angeles, which is all covered over, who knows what they may dig up? They may dig up a monkey who lived in a zoo, they may dig up the mayor of Los Angeles, they may dig up anything. What will they conclude from their findings? That all of Los Angeles was made up of monkeys?
Prabhupada: It is simply poor fund of knowledge. He is going to give us knowledge, but he is very, very poor in his knowledge.
Syamasundara: Actually, most of the men that they've dug up from ancient times were dumb hunters who died in some hunting accident anyway. They were a lower nature man. But I am still not clear about why they have never found out any remains of cities or ancient civilizations that were highly...
Prabhupada: That is no reason. Suppose...
Bali-mardana: Actually they have. There are a number of archaeologists who have made findings like, particularly one, I can't remember his name, but he did an elaborate investigation on the Egyptian culture. And his thesis was that their culture was far more advanced than ours. They had mathematical techniques, they had...
Prabhupada: Ajanta Caves. Ajanta Caves. Why that is? So artistic. He's unfortunate, he's simply excavated caves...
Syamasundara: I read about the paint in that cave. They don't know how it's still preserved. There's no chemical that they have today that will preserve paint so long.
Prabhupada: So he's unfortunate. He could not find out Ajanta Cave; he found out some monkey's cave, that's all.
Bali-mardana: The Egyptians had some geometric techniques that they're even..., they don't understand. They discount them...
Syamasundara: Prabhupada said that they took that from the Indians, geometry.
Bali-mardana: But this one archaeologist wrote a book saying that this community in Egypt three thousand years ago was far superior, and no one accepted. No one believed him.
Syamasundara: Even in Mexico there are so many highly advanced...
Prabhupada: Mexico is Indian civilization. They were showing to (indistinct). The Ravana had subway to Brazil. It can be seen from here where you can make subway...
Syamasundara: Yes, straight through.
Prabhupada: Straight through. And therefore Ravana had so much gold; he took it from his brother's kingdom. Partly it was all one kingdom, and one part was being managed by his brother (indistinct) and one by himself. And in the Ramayana it is said that Rama-Laksmana was taken to a subway to (indistinct)'s place; that means Rama and Laksmana was taken to Brazil through subway. So now if you can make subways now--there actually there is subway for five hundred miles--why not five thousand miles? What is the difficulty? If it is possible to make subway up to five hundred, why not five thousand? It will require so many things.
Syamasundara: They say that the center of the earth is molten fire, fiery. It is liquid. Liquid fire.
Bali-mardana: (indistinct) insulated tube, insulated tube through the fire.
Prabhupada: No. That portion may be avoided.
Syamasundara: Oh. Go around the crust.
Prabhupada: Yes. Therefore "I am going in subway, now here is the hard column, so I go this way." What is, what is that?
Syamasundara: If worms can do it, why we can't?
Prabhupada: Rats can do it. Snake can do it. Not snake. Snakes cannot. Rats can do. (break)
Svarupa Damodara: ...the knowledge that we get from the so-called scientific theories of...
Prabhupada: Poor fund of knowledge.
Svarupa Damodara: ...consciousness, and the theory of...

Syamasundara: Are scientists beginning to understand that fact, or are they still...
Svarupa Damodara: They never think about that. That's why they are trying to find out so many things, because they think that when somebody tries to make some medicine or compound, they try so many ways and means, and sometimes, when they are at a loss, they say, "O God, please give me (indistinct)." They do not know where it comes from, how this can be made. They try so many ways in making a compound. Sometimes they have to take a hundred or two hundred mistakes, and sometimes they will never get the compound. Ordinarily, when they are all disappointed, they say, "O God, please help me." So ordinarily the final conclusion is everybody stays on...
Prabhupada: That is natural because, after all, God gives him intelligence. It is stated in Bhagavad-gita: mattah smrtir jnanam apohanam ca: "It is from Me." Apohanam ca. He was forgetting. There wasn't..., God was not giving the chance, and he prays to God, then God is (indistinct): "All right, do it like that." That is the statement in Bhagavad-gita.
Svarupa Damodara: But as soon as they get a compound, then they forget God.
Syamasundara: Darwin did that. He made the appearance and disappearance of animals' bodies seem so mechanically arranged that God was removed from the picture, and it appeared as if combinations of ingredients created animals and they evolved from each other.
Prabhupada: That is another foolishness. Combination means God. He is combining. Combination does not take automatically. Suppose I am cooking. There are so many ingredients for cooking--they are not combined together. I am the cooker; I am cooking, first of all oil, and the spices, then the rice, then the dahl, then the water. In this way nice foodstuff is coming out. So this combination means God. Otherwise where is the instant the combination is taking place? I place all the ingredients in the kitchen room, and after one hour if I go, "Oh, where is my food?" (laughing) You nonsense, who is cooking your food? You starve. Just take help of a living being, then we'll cook and then you can eat. This is our experience. So why does he say combination? Wherefrom the combination comes? He is such a fool he does not know how combination takes place.
Syamasundara: There are several theories how everything began in that book on the origin of life. They are quite interesting.
Prabhupada: That is theory, but we see practically that material things, material elements, ingredients, they cannot be combined automatically. There must be a living entity who will combine them.
Syamasundara: One of the theories is that everything comes out of an energy.
Prabhupada: Energy means somebody's energy. I am sitting here, I am pushing one button, the energy is immediately created, and it goes, just like the Telex machine. So somebody is pushing the button.
Bali-mardana: The energetic.
Prabhupada: And then the energy is produced. Computer machine... The machine is doing nothing out of his own accord. Somebody is going and pushing the button. Then it will..., the energy is created. Similarly, according to our Vedic knowledge, as soon as God wishes, immediately the energy is set off, set into action, and then other things come automatically.
Bali-mardana: In the trend of the scientists is that by their scientific research and their limited success which they enjoy, they are becoming more and more convinced that there is no God. They say everything is due to physical law.
Prabhupada: No. That is the proof that they are saying there is no God, because as soon as God would withdraw the speaking power, he would not be able to speak--there is no power.
Syamasundara: This book is called The Creation of the Universe.
Prabhupada: It is a scientific book?
Syamasundara: Oh, yes.
Svarupa Damodara: It is written by a scientist from...
Prabhupada: So he does not agree God created?
Syamasundara: Oh, no.
Prabhupada: So there was a chunk.
Syamasundara: "The hierarchy of condensations." There are two theories: one is that everything was originally gas, and the other is that everything was originally turbulence or energy.
Prabhupada: Originally gas. Now, so far as we have experience, gas is produced from some liquid, is it not?
Syamasundara: They say that the liquid is produced from the gas.
Prabhupada: That is also topical.
Svarupa Damodara: (indistinct)
Prabhupada: Yes. Anything, what was there in the beginning, that was matter.
Syamasundara: This says, "After the first complement of the atomic species had been formed during the first hour of expansion, nothing of particular interest happened for the next thirty million years."
Prabhupada: Where is the evidence that he is speaking the truth?
Syamasundara: The making of atoms.
Bali-mardana: They say that something came out of nothing, that originally there was nothing, at a point in history, and at a point in history something began.
Syamasundara: Well, it says that there was a "frozen equilibrium and a spontaneous break-up of primordial nuclear fluid. The original state of matter is assumed to be a hot nuclear gas, (indistinct)."
Prabhupada: So first thing is that whatever he is speaking, what is the evidence that his word is to be accepted by us?
Bali-mardana: For most people it is just his word. Whatever his contemporary scientists conclude, he offers some insignificant evidence.
Prabhupada: If words are to be accepted as true, why not accept the words of Krsna? Who can be greater authority than Krsna? If your word does not require any evidence, you are a renowned scientist, your words are sufficient, then greater scientist, greater personality is Krsna. Then why should we not accept His words? We do not know what it is, but you are presenting there in bombastic words and we have to accept your word. Is it not? So I will say that instead of accepting your words, why not accept Krsna's word? He's greater personality.
Bali-mardana: Someone will come along in a year or a few years and refute everything that this scientist says.
Prabhupada: Yes, yes. That we say.
Syamasundara: There are three different theories, each one different. They all start with an original situation of like a chunk, hot gas measured in billions of degrees of temperature, and out of that hot gas things condense.
Bali-mardana: That's not starting from the beginning...

Syamasundara: It was called a frozen equilibrium.
Bali-mardana: If there's an equilibrium, it has to be complete, you know, energetic.
Svarupa Damodara: (indistinct)
Syamasundara: This is a diagram of four different possibilities of what the universe looks like.
Prabhupada: This is very nice--horse saddle.
Syamasundara: Yes, they call it a saddle.
Prabhupada: It is convenient to ride over.
Syamasundara: Masters of the universe.
Bali-mardana: They could make a thousand different drawings.
Syamasundara: These are all based on mathematical principles. They have observed that the universe is expanding, so they are trying to figure out what shape it is expanding into.
Bali-mardana: That information is also in the Vedas: if Maha-Visnu breathes out, the universes expand, and when Maha-Visnu breathes in, the universes contract.
Syamasundara: It says, "It can be shown that a closed Einsteinian universe can expand only to a certain limit, beyond which the expansion will go over into contraction." So they also agree that the universe expands and contracts.
Prabhupada: Expand means it was not in its present state. Original state was in seed.
Syamasundara: That seed they say was a hot gas.
Prabhupada: So the seed is so powerful that it has become a universe. So who made that seed, wonderful seed? And wherefrom it came? What is the tree? What is the fruit? Wherefrom that seed comes? So many questions are there.
Svarupa Damodara: The so-called modern increased living taught by people who have the ideas... The result is they are always led by people who think like that. Because like Srila Prabhupada said on some of the letters, "The blind men leading the blind."
Prabhupada: They accept blind men leading them.
Bali-mardana: They say the empiric mind just cannot (indistinct) revelation, that revelation isn't experimental to our limited knowledge, or to our knowledge. The hard-core scientist doesn't want to listen to revelation or what he considers theoretical spiritual knowledge, because he can't examine it or experiment with it himself; therefore he considers it a waste of time. If he can't see it or understand it with his mind, he doesn't think that it has any bearing or importance.
Prabhupada: So scientific brain means ultimately becoming a fool. He'll talk all nonsense. Once he is recognized scientist, then he can talk all nonsense, and the people accept it as scientific truth.
Syamasundara: They say that our planet, along with all of the other stars and bodies in this universe, is about five billion years old. It is calculated several ways. One of the ways they have calculated the age of our ocean is five billion, and the age of our oldest rocks, along with the way that the stars are distributing themselves, they must be five billion years old. (break) Could you repeat that, Srila Prabhupada?
Prabhupada: The Western philosophers and historians, in order to support Darwin's theory of anthropology, have never agreed to accept that the Vedic literatures written long, long years ago, but these less intelligent philosophers and theologists, their theory has been also dismantled by the discovery of this Ajanta Cave. From that cave it was very, very intelligent; and they are excavating other part, simply studying the bones. There is other side also, this is also excavation; and it can be proved that very intelligent persons were there.
Syamasundara: I read about a column near Delhi that they found, made of some metal, that had been there for many, many thousands of years.
Prabhupada: Many such things have been discovered, and besides that, they are searching after dead bones, and we are searching after living brains. So which should we consider better? Now this Valmiki Ramayana, it was written at least eight hundred..., five thousands of years ago.
Syamasundara: Eight hundred times five thousand?
Prabhupada: No. Eight hundred thousand and five...
Syamasundara: 850,000 years.
Prabhupada: Eight hundred thousands of years and five thousands of years.
Syamasundara: 805,000 years.
Prabhupada: Yes. Long, long ago the Vedic knowledge was there. The Brahma-samhita, it is to be understood written by Brahma millions and millions of years ago.
Syamasundara: In all of our Western history they never once referred to the Indian civilization.
Prabhupada: Because they will be defeated. Because they will be defeated. They never recognize. That was British (indistinct)--the Britishers, they wanted to (indistinct). That is the cause of degradation of Indian culture. They manufactured such a... Even Dr. Radhakrishnan is a victim of that policy. They wanted to impress upon the Indian that before the arrival of the Britishers we were almost uncivilized: "We have made you civilized." And these rascal leaders, they accepted. That was the policy. Because they are very intelligent people. Lord (indistinct): "If you keep them as they are, you will never be able to rule over them." And later on also, when Gandhi started that "Noncooperate with these rascals, they will go away. They are by force getting our cooperation and killing us." So noncooperate. Therefore he established the noncooperation movement. And Sir (indistinct), one of the greatest diplomats, statesmen, like this, he said that "This is a very dangerous movement. Try to cut down this movement. Otherwise, if one percent of the Indian people noncooperate, it will not be possible for us to rule over them." So in order to get our cooperation they are simply impressing that before the arrival of the Britisher, Indians were uncivilized. So many books they published. One American prostitute(?) wrote Mother India, Simply blaspheming Indian temples, culture, priests, like that. Gandhi remarked on that book, "Drain Inspector's Report." And he has simply picked up the bad side. Sometimes the priests in the temple, they make some bad behavior with a woman; she has picked that, not the better side.
Syamasundara: Practically, until now, no one except you has brought Indian culture out. No one has known before that they had high culture.
Prabhupada: Yes. No. Because (indistinct). And all the swamis and yogis, they also rascals, they brought some yoga systems, exercises, like that. No philosophy, no culture. As we are touching now everything: sociology, politics, religion, culture, philosophy, everything, completely. Just like we are discussing now the Prthu Maharaja's kingdom, how nice it is.

Syamasundara: Today when we were looking at the Sanskrit slokas, I suddenly realized that this very strict form of sloka made it easy to memorize for the people. Therefore they were always...
Prabhupada: Yes. The sastras were so made that if you repeatedly chant five or six times, it will be memorized. And once it is memorized, you will never forget it.
Syamasundara: Then you can pass it down and you don't have to write it.
Prabhupada: No. That requires only memory. That was the system, sruti. Once heard from the spiritual master, it is memorized for good. The memory was so sharp, and the memory was prepared by this brahmacarya.
Syamasundara: And the grammatical rules are so arranged to make it easy to memorize--natural rhythm.
Prabhupada: Natural, quite natural, natural rhythm. It's not artificial.
Syamasundara: Whereas our Western poems are all so many different lines, lengths, rhythms, you can't remember them.
Prabhupada: There is no standard. There is Trayita Darpana(?), there is a book, you can... So many words, the first pronunciation five, second pronunciation seven, eleven. There's different kinds of (indistinct), sandhi.
Syamasundara: So it's meant for hearing and memorizing.
Prabhupada: Yes. You can sing also very nicely, sing also, with tamboura. It is very nice. (sings:) Cintamani-prakara-sadmasu kalpa, like that, it is very, very nice, like songs. In every temple there should be, one man should play on tamboura and chant. It requires nice pronunciation, and with the sound of tamboura it will be (indistinct). People are coming, offering darsana, and the singing is going on. That is the system in Indian temples. It immediately vibrates.
Syamasundara: Do you suppose that the British supported Darwin so that that would also help their political ambitions, by...
Prabhupada: Yes. The British wanted that all the big men born in their nation--all big scientists, all big philosophers, all big politicians--they are God's selected persons; therefore they must rule over the world. That was their program.
Syamasundara: And by putting out this book, The Origin of Species, they at once did away with God, after that Nietzsche, another philosopher who said "God is dead," he made that statement first, right after Darwin's book came out: "God is dead."
Prabhupada: So we have to fight against all these nonsense philosophers.
Syamasundara: That boy Svarupa Damodara is going to move into the temple for a few days, and each day we will discuss a different scientific topic. Tomorrow genetics...
Prabhupada: Yes. He is a scientist. He will talk technical words.
Syamasundara: He is going to bring all of his books. And I also studied science for many years, so if I refresh, and if all of the students become armed with these arguments, they can defeat any scientist. Normally they are unable to answer scientists. It is difficult to answer scientists for some devotees, because they have such strong arguments.
Prabhupada: This point should be stressed, that he is dealing with dead bones, and we are dealing with living brains.
Syamasundara: Just like Bhagavad-gita is so perfectly written, so perfect and complete.

Prabhupada: And also there is Bhagavata, Srimad-Bhagavatam, everything, everything; every, Puranas. They have presented all these books as--what is called--allegory.
Syamasundara: Fiction, allegory.
Prabhupada: Story. And the so-called swamis, they have also accepted like this. Therefore you can interpret in you own way. If it is a fact, how you can interpret it? But we are presenting as it is, fact. That is our business.
Syamasundara: They present so many newspapers every day and say this is fact, but this, lies, so many lies.
Prabhupada: Even Dr. Radhakrishnan, mental speculation is a big thing, of the Western propaganda.
Syamasundara: I think he said it is the crowning achievement of speculative thought.
Prabhupada: He has said like that?
Syamasundara: "Bhagavad-gita is the crowning achievement of speculative thought," as if some sages thought it up.
Prabhupada: Now what is there? Finished. (break) ...fact. It is known to the Vedic culture millions of years ago. Our scripture (indistinct), (indistinct); it is Brahma-vaivarta Purana and this Brahma-vaivarta Purana was written by Vyasadeva five thousand years ago. And it was known long, long years ago. It was written in the Puranas, but it was studied by tradition long, long ago. So we should He has stolen this theory, this idea, from Brahma-vaivarta Purana, and he has tried to prove it in a different way. Otherwise this evolutionary theory is already there.

asitim caturas caiva
laksams tan jiva-jatisu
bhramadbhih purusaih prapyam
manusyam janma-paryayat

Syamasundara: But Darwin doesn't have any conception of the jiva.
Prabhupada: He's a nonsense. That's all.
Syamasundara: He sees only the bodies are changing.
Prabhupada: Yasyatma-buddhih kunape tri-dhatuke, sa eva go-kharah. Anyone, that is also mentioned there. Tesam atma vimanuna (indistinct). Foolish. Child. Child thinks "I am this body." (indistinct) means fool. (indistinct): "I am this body." Animal thinks that "I am this body." Virakara (indistinct) atma vinanena anasrita. They do not know what is my position. Misleading.
Syamasundara: There is a scientific subject which has become very popular now, called genetics, which has to do with the origins of life.
Prabhupada: But these so-called scientific theories are popular now and unpopular after few years. That's all. Again something popular. But they are not science. Science cannot be popular now and unpopular after some days.
Syamasundara: But it's only because they just discovered it.
Prabhupada: Discovering, partial, that's like... They cannot discover. Things are there passing on, so many things, passing on.
Syamasundara: What it means in essence is that they have analyzed the individual cell of the living entity and they have found in each cell a set of genes, forty-six in each cell. These genes contain the blueprints for the whole body, like the seed of a tree contains the whole tree. So it is possible, they say, by rearranging these genes or changing them slightly that a new type of person can come out, or a new type of living entity, from the original.
Prabhupada: Definitely. What we call the jiva, they might be talking of the jiva or genes. The genes, the jiva, they can have any nice type of body.
Devotee: Can the scientists control that, the type of genes, the kinds of body, the child you get?
Prabhupada: Just like we give dimension of the soul, so that statement is given by some man. Just like one ten-thousandth part of the tip of the hair, we get information from the Puranas. So this statement is also given by a man, but he is not ordinary. So any extraordinary man can give it.
Syamasundara: These genes are visible through a microscope, so they are not...
Prabhupada: This is also visible. When I say that one ten-thousandth part of the hair, it is visible. Otherwise how I say? But it may not be visible to you. (indistinct)
Syamasundara: (indistinct) genes are not the same as the jiva in this case.
Prabhupada: That is different. But jiva can be given any type of a body. That is not difficult.
Syamasundara: So they say that each person is different from every other person because of the arrangement of the genes in the cell is uniquely his.
Prabhupada: (indistinct) That depends on the father and the mother.
Syamasundara: But the same genes will be passed on to their children, so they will have characteristics like their parents in that way.
Prabhupada: That is the body--this body.
Syamasundara: So they are considering that by altering these genes in certain ways, they can make very highly intelligent persons come out or very low-bred persons come out.
Prabhupada: That is already there. What is their credit?
Atreya Rsi: They want to control more.
Prabhupada: Well, what is the function? It is already there. It is not under your control.
Syamasundara: Their idea is that they can make xerox copies of whatever type of personality they like.
Prabhupada: That's right; xerox copy means the original sample is already there. So what is the credit there?
Devotee: There may be only one very, very intelligent person, but by their method they may think that they may create a whole society.
Syamasundara: I'll read you some of their predictions. Some of them are very frightening. They say by 1980--that's eight years from now--that they will be able to create synthetic life in the form of artificial viruses which will be used to cure some forms of genetic diseases. Artificial life. In eight years they say they will have artificial life.
Prabhupada: What is that artificial meaning?
Syamasundara: Small viruses or living organisms, very small. But by the year 2000 they say they will be able to keep...
Prabhupada: 2000!
Syamasundara: Yes. That's twenty-eight years from now. They say that they will be able to deep-freeze embryos, that means unborn babies, as insurance against nuclear holocaust and for interplanetary colonization. In other words, they can send these unborn babies in frozen form to other planets and have an arrangement for them to be born and grow in the spaceship and then go out.
Prabhupada: Don't waste your time with these rascals.
Syamasundara: They'll have an artificial and mechanical baby factory, effective control of most human defects. Single-celled life will be created from chemicals off the shelf. They can make intelligent animals do menial work. And then in seventy-eight years they say that they will be able to regenerate...
Prabhupada: Just like there was Pan American, they were selling tickets for going to Candraloka. Reservation.
Devotee: Prabhupada, is it possible that man could ever make even a one-celled living being?
Prabhupada: Even if he makes, what is credit there? Cells are already there. What is the question of making?
Syamasundara: All they're doing is creating the conditions for the jiva to enter, actually. Isn't it?
Prabhupada: Whatever their proposal, these things were already there. So even they can create something, xerox copy, what he is creating?
Syamasundara: But then they'll have control over it. That's their...
Prabhupada: No, no control, because you are beginning on something of which you have no control. So where is your control?
Syamasundara: "From now on I'm the master. I can create more Einsteins. I can create many Einsteins."
Prabhupada: But first of all keep Einstein living. Why he is dying?
Syamasundara: That's on their program too.
Prabhupada: That's on their program--that is is another foolish thing.
Syamasundara: Postponement of death by at least fifty years...
Prabhupada: Yes. So what is the profit? After fifty years he has to die. Stop death. Stop death, then there is credit.
Syamasundara: They say they will be able to take out someone like Einstein's brain when his body dies and keep it alive, a disembodied brain, and use it like a computer.
Prabhupada: All right. Whatever. (sounding disgusted) No. All rascals, fools. As if in the brain there is the thing... What is this brain? It is a material substance, what is there, lump of matter.
Syamasundara: Just like they can take a heart out of a living being and they put it in a machine and keep it alive and they transplant it to some other, other person.
Prabhupada: The same intelligence, yasyatma-buddhih kunape tri-dhatuke, they're trying to find out life in this lump of matter. That is their defect.
Syamasundara: They'll spend so many billions of dollars, and years of work.
Prabhupada: The same example. Just like computer machine. They do not find that if machine is made by a brain which is different from this material. But he's trying to find out a brain from this. This is their childishness. The brain is different from machine. The machine is lump of iron. And the one who is working with the machine is a different from the machine. That they do not know. That they do not know. That is their defect. Now what is this computer machine will do unless there is a worker in the computer room, highly salaried man?

Syamasundara: Unless it's plugged into the wall it doesn't work.
Prabhupada: Lump of matter, iron, that's all. But that they do not know. They are so foolish and rascal. Then they're trying to find out. This is same childishness, that "I'm trying to find out the singer within the box, within the box." It is like that.
Svarupa Damodara: (indistinct--regarding scientific speculation)
Prabhupada: That's all. It is simply mental speculation.
Syamasundara: They haven't even come near to these things yet.
Prabhupada: They'll never come.
Svarupa Damodara: Mostly scientists are digging up, trying to find out something when they get some very basic preliminary ideas, they speculate so much (indistinct) always. Every scientist does like that (indistinct).
Prabhupada: (indistinct) change. It has changed. The circumstances have changed.
Svarupa Damodara: (indistinct) very delicate, the substances they are handling, the elements, the cells, the microorganisms, they are also subjected to different changes. Without knowing anything they're taking that each others' perfect, based on their perfect thinking, what they have learned is infallible.
Prabhupada: Therefore our sastra says these classes of men, no better than cows and asses. Sa eva go-kharah. Go means cows; and asses. We take them like go-kharah, cows and asses. Then they speculate, but we take them, "You are no better than asses and cows."
Syamasundara: They work very hard for a little morsel of grass.
Prabhupada: Yes. That's right. Some fools will give them credit, and that credit is given by such class of men: dogs, hogs, camels and asses. No good men. Krsna conscious men will never give them anything. But men like dogs, hogs, asses and camels will give them. Samstutah purusah pasuh, this they are. Sva-vid-varahostra-kharaih samstutah. Samstutah means eulogized. This class of men will be eulogized by whom? By dogs, hogs, camels, and asses. No Vyasadeva will give them credit; no Narada will give them credit; neither Krsna will give them credit, nor followers of Krsna consciousness will give them credit. Because they have a criterion to know what kind of man he is. They have got sastra, and from the sastra it is understood one who is accepting this body as the self, he is no better than cow and ass. That is our culture. He has not still found out that the worker of the machine is different. This body is just like machine. May be composed of highly mechanical arrangement, electronic parts and this and that, so many things, but after is a machine! And this machine must be worked by somebody. He must be living. He is not machine.
Syamasundara: They can't create a machine that will act like a human being?
Prabhupada: No, no. Even if it can act, still it has to be worked. Unless I push the buttons, you cannot work. That they are missing. Just like you say that computer machine is the same, or so many things, but as soon as you say that "I want this," immediately. But you have to push the button. This machine is working when I push this plug into the electricity.
Svarupa Damodara: Computers cannot correct their mistakes. They'll just give a message that it's wrong.
Syamasundara: No. They have correction. They have correction.
Prabhupada: That's all right. Even they... But ultimately the mechanic is able to work on the computer machine.
Syamasundara: But what about this artificially changing bodies before they are born, before they are growing?
Prabhupada: That is also same thing. Just like I change your shirt, what is that?
Syamasundara: But I mean, isn't that a demonic act?
Prabhupada: That we shall consider later. Demonic it must be, but this change, this change can be possible.
Syamasundara: If by our karma we desire a certain type of body but they create all the bodies to be the same, how is that? But men are tampering with the bodies.
Prabhupada: Let them create first, then say. Where is the man they are creating? It is simply theory.
Lilavati: That living entity would still have the same desire, that previous desire for that previous body, won't he? If some scientist can change the genes so that the jiva can have a different kind of body, he still would have the previous desires?
Prabhupada: No, no. That is not possible. If his body... The word is daiva netrena: by superior arrangement. So how these rascals can be superior? They are not.
Atreya Rsi: And also, Prabhupada, in case, for example some scientist makes a change, like if the scientist comes and cuts off my head, that's also my karma. In that way he's not making a change. Everything that is happening is God's plan.
Prabhupada: No, no, no, no, no. Everything, even if it is not in my karma, I can cut, I become responsible for cutting.
Atreya Rsi: In other words, if somebody comes and cuts my head...
Prabhupada: Yes. He can do that. He creates his own karma.
Atreya Rsi: Jaya. But how about my karma?
Prabhupada: My karma is that such thing might happen. Your karma is that he'll also cut his head, next life.
Atreya Rsi: The fact that my head got cut this life, wasn't this due to something I did before? (end)